Changelog 2021.11

2021.11

Browser Bots: Camera & Microphone Support

Browser Bots now provide a dummy camera and microphone device, and automatically grant permission to them, if the pages you’re testing ask for it. The devices are stubbed out and send uninteresting video and audio streams. You don’t actually get to see the bots looking into their cameras, sadly.

Browser Bots: File Inputs

Browser Bots can now use the Files step to interact with file input elements, like <input type="file"/>.

Browser Bots Files step interface

When you choose a file in your script with this step, the file content becomes part of the script, so you can run the script out in the cloud or on a self-hosted engine without needing access to your local filesystem.

There’s also an equivalent way to do this in a code block, but you’ll have to encode the file’s content as Base64 yourself, like this:

browser.chooseFiles('input[type=file]', [
{
name: 'cat',
contentType: 'image/jpeg',
contentBase64: 'UklGRuZ/AABXRUJQVlA4INp/AABwrAGdASr0AQACPjkYi0QiIaET...'
}
]);

Report URL Simplification

Your Loadster reports include a graph with a breakdown of response times by URL. Each unique URL from your load test is a separate graph series. Normally this is super useful, but it gets messy if your test visits too many unique URLs. For example, your bots might get redirected to a dynamic URL that’s different each time, and showing each of these dynamic URLs as a separate graph series is unhelpful.

To tidy up your graphs, we’ve added a new setting to Settings, called Report URL Simplification. Possible values are:

  • Leave URLs as-is (in their full unaltered glory)
  • Truncate URL query strings (remove the whole query string, starting with the question mark)
  • Strip URL parameter values (keep the query params, but replace values with underscores)

Improvements & Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a bug that caused iterations per group to be ignored with small numbers of bots.
  • Made the Halt script execution on any error setting apply to individual actions within a code block, not just the entire code block.
  • Stopped background navigations within nested iframes from showing up in the Response Times.
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the Timeline and Logs to get stuck when stopping a script early in the editor.
  • Made our home-brewed iframe selectors work with all the CSS attributes.
  • Added the step number to traces so you can tell which step generated the trace.

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