Few weeks ago I wanted to test uploading a binary file to HTTP server using JMeter. It is a very good tool, but there are some issues. Theoretically there are three ways of doing this in JMeter.
1. Creating a single request file from scratch
The hardest approach is to create a full HTTP request, containing all the headers and content of the binary file and use that file in a definition of a test case.
2. Recording a test case
JMeter allows recording traffic between a server and a client. Unfortunately for some reason a recorded http request was corrupted. There was a problem with some characters, so the server wasn't able to parse even a header of the request. I thought that the problem is in a wrong encoding. I changed it to "UTF-8" in "HTTP Request Defaults" and it started to work. The file appeared on the server. After that, I wanted to check if it works with other encoding types, it worked the same with all of them. Than I removed completely the encoding setting and it still worked. Then I removed JMeter and installed (unpacked) it again and tried without setting the encoding - it worked. It seems that setting the encoding solves the problem, but I have no idea why it still worked although I removed it. Unfortunately I didn't have time to investigate it deeper.
3. Creating a test case manually using a JMeter UI
In the JMeter UI there is a dialog which allows defining a test case. Tester is able to add a http request header paramters and attach files which will be send as a content of the http request. The problem is that there is no way to set a content type as multipart/mixed, what was required in my case.
JMeter as a proxy - binary files corrupted
During investigation I noticed that when JMeter is set as a proxy, uploaded files are somehow corrupted. It might be related to previously mentioned encoding settings. For those who want to do performance tests I think that it doesn't matter that much.
I need to mention that I didn't spend too much time to investigate the problem and I used JMeter with GUI. If someone knows better solutions, comments will be appreciated.
Besides described issues, JMeter is a really useful tool.
1. Creating a single request file from scratch
The hardest approach is to create a full HTTP request, containing all the headers and content of the binary file and use that file in a definition of a test case.
2. Recording a test case
JMeter allows recording traffic between a server and a client. Unfortunately for some reason a recorded http request was corrupted. There was a problem with some characters, so the server wasn't able to parse even a header of the request. I thought that the problem is in a wrong encoding. I changed it to "UTF-8" in "HTTP Request Defaults" and it started to work. The file appeared on the server. After that, I wanted to check if it works with other encoding types, it worked the same with all of them. Than I removed completely the encoding setting and it still worked. Then I removed JMeter and installed (unpacked) it again and tried without setting the encoding - it worked. It seems that setting the encoding solves the problem, but I have no idea why it still worked although I removed it. Unfortunately I didn't have time to investigate it deeper.
3. Creating a test case manually using a JMeter UI
In the JMeter UI there is a dialog which allows defining a test case. Tester is able to add a http request header paramters and attach files which will be send as a content of the http request. The problem is that there is no way to set a content type as multipart/mixed, what was required in my case.
JMeter as a proxy - binary files corrupted
During investigation I noticed that when JMeter is set as a proxy, uploaded files are somehow corrupted. It might be related to previously mentioned encoding settings. For those who want to do performance tests I think that it doesn't matter that much.
I need to mention that I didn't spend too much time to investigate the problem and I used JMeter with GUI. If someone knows better solutions, comments will be appreciated.
Besides described issues, JMeter is a really useful tool.
