Load testing on ASP.NET web application using CapCal

Question

I'm using CapCal to perform load testing on a asp.net WebForms web application. When a new build is uploaded to the test environment we need to record (i'm using fiddler to record the tests) a new set of tests because otherwise VIEWSTATE errors are thrown.

The builds are not very different, the same tests are done on each, we want to see if we have performance improvements from one build to the next. We would like to use the same tests to asses performance in the same conditions on every build, plus the recording process is very time consuming.

1. Is there a way in CapCal to set the VIEWSTATE as a variable (extract the viewstate from the page source, assign the extracted value to a variable) instead of a hard coded value?

2. Unrelated problem: When a new set of tests is uploaded the "+" sign from the url is replaced with " " (white space) i.e. "/index.aspx?WebSiteRedirect=true&host=DateTime=2013-01-15+05%3a43%3a01" becomes "/index.aspx?WebSiteRedirect=true&host=DateTime=2013-01-15 05%3a43%3a01". Is there an option in CapCal to avoid this problem?

Answer 1

Is there a way in CapCal to set the VIEWSTATE as a variable (extract the viewstate from the page source, assign the extracted value to a variable) instead of a hard coded value?

What you're looking for is commonly referred to as automatic test configuration or automatic variable correlation. I'm not familiar with CapCal, perhaps searching the help for "correlation" or "dynamic" will help. If CapCal can't do that for you, then you may want to look for a tool that can. Manual configuration of fields like __VIEWSTATE can be very time-consuming. Many .NET apps have other fields that need this treatment as well - I don't recall them at the moment, but __EVENTARGUMENT, __EVENTTARGET and __EVENTVALIDATION come to mind.

The other issue is related to turning on the correct "URL Encoding" scheme, but I don't know how to do that in CapCal :(

Answer 2

Well i can help you with the second issue:

Replace + with %2b and that will work.

As far as the viewstate correlation is concerned, I'm still looking into it.

I'll keep you posted if you are still interested.