Webform Variables 101

Question

Hi, 

Very basic question on Webform Variables.

1. How to get theTextBox values in my webtest plugin?

2. How to get posted data?

Details: 

I've created a webtest plugin that overrides PreWebTest, in which I want to grab what's currently being entered on the web forms, and do further processing (eg, appending current date & time). 

Body must be 4 to 60000 characters long

Answer 1

Continued:

Source page : Default.aspx

 <form id="form1" action ="Default2.aspx" method="post" runat="server">            
<table>            
<tr>                
<td><asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" Text="T521" runat="server"></asp:TextBox></td>            
</tr>               
</table>        
<table>            
<tr>                
<td>                    
<asp:Button ID="Submit" runat="server" Text="Submit" /></td>            
</tr>        
</table>              
</form>

Answer 2

Continued:

Destination page : Default2.aspx

<form id="form1" runat="server">    
<div>        
<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="Label1"></asp:Label>    
</div>    
</form>

I want to grab what's currently being entered in TextBox1, append current date & time to it, than post the form. In Default2.aspx, I want to changed the Label1 to be, TextBox1: <value of TextBox1>. 

How can I do that? 

Thanks a lot for your help.

Answer 3

Q3: I want to put in Context Parameter a variable named Today, with value of 

String.Format("{0:ddd, MMM d, yyyy}",  DateTime.Today). 

How can I do that? 

Thanks

Answer 4

Hi Smetah,

This is a plugin that will generate a Context Parameter called Today with the Format specified in your post. This will happen in the PreWebTest event before any requests are fired.

 public class TodayContextParam : WebTestPlugin
    {
        public override void PreWebTest(object sender, PreWebTestEventArgs e)
        {
            e.WebTest.Context["Today"] = DateTime.Now.ToString("ddd, MMM d, yyyy");
        }
    }

---

http://blogs.msdn.com/rogeorge

Answer 5

What you want to do here is use an extraction rule to dynamically 'extract' the value from the response in the HTML on the client side for your Text. So, there are a number of built in extraction rules , and for this one a simple ExtractText rule, where you set the StartsWith and EndsWith properties to the surrounding tags in the HTML output should do the trick.

The extraction rule puts the value in a context parameter so you can use it wherever you need to reference it. If you reference it in code then it would be in form of WebTest.Context["NameOfContextParam"].ToString() if you were getting the value for example. So the extraction rule gets you whatever is there when the response comes back from the server and stores it in the Context Parameter. Then you can do whatever to that Context Parameter value, such as appedning dates/time to it and then wherever you have bound this in your requests querystring / form post parameters it will use this value when your request is made.

This blog has an example of adding a Context Parameter by using the playback viewer, and you can search for other examples.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/slumley/archive/2009/05/28/vs-2010-feature-web-test-playback-enhancements.aspx

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http://blogs.msdn.com/rogeorge

Answer 6

Thanks rogeorge, You've been most helpful.

Let me ask one more question before I mark everything as answer,

Having extracted the values into context parameter, what's the best plugin place to do my further processing?

I'm still not too sure if it is PreWebTest or PreTransaction, or something else.

Thanks.

Answer 7

Hi Smetah,

Selecting the right event depends on what processing your doing, what is the source of the data you need to process and where will the data be used.

PreWebTest event happens before any requests are made so you wont have any dynamic processing of data that you extracted from a request here, this is where you setup things in the context that are then subsequently available to all the items in the test.

PreRequest & PreRequestDataBinding happen before the request they are bound to, so here is the place to process items before they are actually sent.

PostRequest happens after a request is completed, and here is where you can do some post processing on data that you might have extracted from the responses.

---

http://blogs.msdn.com/rogeorge

Answer 8

Thanks rogeorge,

Is this case, I would think that in

Q101: How to use variables in Web Performance Test, Round 2

The plugin should better override the PreRequest, instead of PreWebTest. Am I right?

Answer 9

If your going to modify values in context parameters before requests then use the PreRequestDataBinding event.

---

http://blogs.msdn.com/rogeorge

Answer 10

Thanks a lot rogeorge, You've been most helpful.