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Quick Start Grinder - Part I

As I explained before, I started liking Grinder as a great solution for load testing . In a series of small posts, I will explain how to go about load testing a web page. I am no expert with Grinder, but I find myself explaining how I do this - Grinder experts, please suggest enhancements where I am not doing it the right way. We will assume Microsoft Windows^TM as the development environment. The topics I want to cover are below.

1. Setting it all up
2. Example project - search Google
3. Extend the example to run in parallel threads
4. Use recorder to generate scripts and then add to your code
5. Tentative : analysis of the data file

Setting Up Grinder

Required Software

Download the following packages and keep them in say, c:\download.

1. Sun JDK 5. It may work with JDK 6, but I’ve not tried it.
2. Grinder 3
3. Jython 2.5.1
4. Active Python 2.5.2.2. This is required only if you need to get a good packaged distribution of Python with documentation - other than that it is not at all required.

Installation

Installation is pretty straight forward.

1. Java: Just follow the installer and install this in c:\java. Ensure that this is in the PATH, but running java -version.
2. Grinder: Extract the download to c:\grinder.
3. Jython: Run the installer to install to c:\jython.

To verify, just run c:\jython\jython.bat. You should see a command prompt.

Head over to getting started guide and prepare the four batch files as explained there.

Note: my installation is at c:\tools\grinder\engine\grinder-3.2.