The Actors View displays the list of actors that both control and respond to the content of your testcase during a replay or a load test. The Actors View is opened by selecting Window → Show View → Actors from the main menu.
At the bottom of the Actors View, there are three tabs that filter out what type of actor the view is currently working with:
The top right of the Actors view additionally displays three buttons that may be used to control various Actors:
Add:
This button allows you to create a new actor. The type of actor created
is determined by which tab of the actors view is currently selected. A
drop-down arrow next to the button may be pressed to display a list of
supported sub-types of actors that may be created.Modifiers may change values submitted to the server from those that were submitted when the testcase was initially recorded.
The Actors View provides a centralized display for reviewing (and if necessary, removing) modifiers that are currently in place in your testcase. To create or revise modifiers, you should use a component of Web Performance Suite™ relevant to the type of value being modified. For more information, please consult the Customizing a Testcase section.
Validators are used during a replay or load test to examine a received response, and determine if that response was valid or not.
In addition to reviewing validators created automatically by various components of Web Performance Suite™, validators may be created by pressing the Add Button of the Actors View. Presently, there are two criteria that a new validator may use (listed from the drop-down menu, located next to the Add button): Content, and Size.
Using content validation, a search string may be entered. When the response is processed, the page will be deemed valid based on whether or not the response content contained the search string. This style of validation is selected by default when pressing the Add button, but may also be accessed through the drop-down menu by selecting "Validate text in content...".
The first option on this screen is concerned with whether
or not to flag an error when the search string is located. The option
"Verify content is not found" is appropriate when entering an
error message. When entering a string of text that is unique to this particular
page, the option "Verify content is found" is appropriate.
The next section determine what this validator will search the response for. Here, a search string may be entered into the "Constant" field. If it is more appropriate to vary the string being searched for, then it is possible to select the appropriate radio button to obtain this value from the current row of a dataset, or from a user variable.
Finally, the "Response Content" displays the content of the current response for reference. When a "Constant" search string has been entered and located, it is possible to scroll to that point by clicking on the highlighted block that appears next to the content display.
Tip: It is not necessary to tab back and forth between the Content View and the Actors View. Either view may be displayed side-by-side with the other by dragging the top tab of the view to the edge of the other view. This makes it easy to Copy text from the Content View, press the "Add" button of the Actors View, and Paste the text into the "Constant" field to validate on.
It is possible to also validate that the size of a response remains within reasonable bounds by using size validation. This style of validation may be used by selecting "Validate content length..." from the drop-down menu next to the Add button.
Using this validator, it is possible to verify the size of the response. Simply check the appropriate options, and enter the corresponding size constraints (measured in bytes). Use "Is no smaller than" to specify a minimum allowable size, and/or "Is no larger than" for a maximum allowable size; or select "Is equal to" to specify a single exact value.
Note: Due to a server's ability to vary the transmitted size of a response (for example: by altering compression scheme or transfer encoding), this option may not be available for some responses.
Extractors are able to examine a response and extract information that can be re-used later by a Modifier.
The Actors View allows you create and edit simple extractors capable of extracting a value into a User Variable. Since the value will likely be changing, an extractor may be specified by using a pair of delimiting anchors to denote the beginning and end of the value to be extracted.
The first section of this dialog allows the prefix and suffix anchors to be entered. The extractor will search for these anchors in the response received during playback, and extract the value located between them. The "Repetition number to extract from" can be increased if the extractor should skip and ignore initial occurrences of the prefix anchor.
Next, the extractor needs to know the name of a user variable to extract the value into. The name of the user variable is used to identify the value in the user state - such as in a modifier that needs the extracted value later in the testcase. Please note that variable names starting with a non-alphanumeric character (e.g. '#') are reserved for use by Web Performance Suite™ and may be overwritten by the software as needed.
The field "Assume extracted value is never URL Encoded" controls the context of the extracted value, and how encoding is performed when a modifier re-submits this value. This capability is available for advanced users, the default value (unselected) will suffice for most normal cases. If the extracted value appears URL Encoded, and can potentially contain the characters "+" and/or "%", but no other characters that would be encoded by a URL Encode process, then this field may be checked to indicate that those characters must be encoded ("%2B" and "%25", respectively) when the extracted value is re-transferred back up to the HTTP server.
Finally, the bottom section of this dialog shows the response that was received when this testcase was recorded. Additionally, a sample value is displayed of what would be extracted, if this extractor processed a response from the server identical to the response being displayed.