httpster

HTTPster

A simple load test tool that executes multiple requests with any method (GET, POST, PUT, ...) and returns raw data to perform detailed analysis.

Motivation

I attempted to conduct load tests to evaluate the latency introduced by some selected API Gateways. Unfortunately, tools like ab and wrk did not provide sufficient information — offering basically mean and standard error — and their output was less than ideal to work with - formated text. This prompted the idea to develop a simple tool that could provide raw data for more thorough analysis.

Usage

# build
make build

# check for options
bin/httpster --help

# run
cat example.json | bin/httpster -duration=30s -threads=4 1> out/data.csv

Please note the 1> as all the metrics are sent to the stdout whereas all the errors to stderr.

Analysis

An example notebook containing analysis of the HTTPster output can be found here.

To load the data from HTTPster please start with the following Python snippet:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("out/data.csv")
df['StartTime'] = pd.to_datetime(df['StartTime'])

From this point you can start your analysis - plot all the distributions, check for anomalies, etc.

Input format

Request definitions are supposed to be provided via stdin in a JSON format with following schema:

{
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema#",
  "type": "array",
  "items": [
    {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "id": {
          "type": "string"
        },
        "url": {
          "type": "string"
        },
        "method": {
          "type": "string"
        },
        "headers": {
          "type": "object"
        },
        "body": {
          "type": "string"
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "url",
        "method"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Example

[
    {
        "id": "PUT /anything",
        "url": "http://httpbin/anything",
        "method": "PUT",
        "headers": {
            "Content-Type": "application/json"
        },
        "body": "{\"data\": {\"key1\":\"val1\"}}"
    }
]

Output format

HTTPster ouutput is in CSV format to stdout. Any error encountered are outputed to stderr. Below is an example of the output

ID,StartTime,Duration_ns,ConnDuration_ns,DialDuration_ns,DNSDuration_ns,Status,StatusCode,Error
GET /,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,338865000,187818875,146996875,40262209,200 OK,200,
GET /,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,342826542,188442916,147601250,40228166,200 OK,200,
GET /,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,343047959,187695292,146739750,40384542,200 OK,200,
GET /,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,484274459,333713000,292769375,40259625,200 OK,200,
GET /anything,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,296632375,147367458,145465667,1757708,200 OK,200,
GET /anything,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,292864292,146642000,145832292,718333,200 OK,200,
GET /anything,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,293629125,146643958,145827709,703833,200 OK,200,
GET /anything,2024-02-12T12:50:58+01:00,299385209,149145125,146590250,2280750,200 OK,200,
PUT /anything,2024-02-12T12:50:59+01:00,298021375,149354792,147107584,2104166,200 OK,200,
PUT /anything,2024-02-12T12:50:59+01:00,297629958,149104042,147283459,1743791,200 OK,200,
PUT /anything,2024-02-12T12:50:59+01:00,296908417,148088459,146979500,987750,200 OK,200,