How to: Create a web performance test plug-in

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Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Web performance tests plug-ins enable you to isolate and reuse code outside the main declarative statements in your web performance test. A customized web performance test plug-in offers you a way to call some code as the web performance test is run. The web performance test plug-in is run one time for every test iteration. In addition, if you override the PreRequest or PostRequest methods in the test plug-in, those request plug-ins will run before or after each request, respectively.

Note

Web performance and load test functionality is deprecated. Visual Studio 2019 is the last version where web performance and load testing will be fully available. For more information, see the Cloud-based load testing service end of life blog post. To reduce the impact on users some minimum support is still available in Visual Studio 2022 Preview 3 or later. Users should also note web performance and load test functionality only supports Internet Explorer which is not available on Windows 11 and some versions of Windows 10. Read more on Internet Explorer Lifecycle policy.

You can create a customized web performance test plug-in by deriving your own class from the WebTestPlugin base class.

You can use customized web performance test plug-ins with the web performance tests you have recorded, which enables you to write a minimal amount of code to obtain a greater level of control over your web performance tests. However, you can also use them with coded web performance tests. For more information, see Generate and run a coded web performance test.

Note

You can also create load test plug-ins. See How to: Create a load test plug-in.

To create a custom web performance test plug-in

  1. Open a web performance and load test project that contains a web performance test.

  2. In Solution Explorer, right-click on the solution and select Add and then choose New Project.

  3. Create a new Class Library project.

    The new class library project is added to Solution Explorer and the new class appears in the Code Editor.

  4. In Solution Explorer, right-click the References folder in the new class library and select Add Reference.

    The Add Reference dialog box is displayed.

  5. Choose the .NET tab, scroll down, and select Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework

  6. Choose OK.

    The reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework is added to the Reference folder in Solution Explorer.

  7. In Solution Explorer, right-click on the top node of the web performance and load test project that contains the load test to which you want to add the web performance test plug-in and select Add Reference.

  8. The Add Reference dialog box is displayed.

  9. Choose the Projects tab and select the Class Library Project.

  10. Choose OK.

  11. In the Code Editor, write the code of your plug-in. First, create a new public class that derives from WebTestPlugin.

  12. Implement code inside one or more of the event handlers. See the following Example section for a sample implementation.

  13. After you have written the code, build the new project.

  14. Open a web performance test.

  15. To add the web performance test plug-in, choose Add Web Test Plug-in on the toolbar.

    The Add Web Test Plug-in dialog box is displayed.

  16. Under Select a plug-in, select your web performance test plug-in class.

  17. In the Properties for selected plug-in pane, set the initial values for the plug-in to use at run time.

    Note

    You can expose as many properties as you want from your plug-ins; just make them public, settable, and of a base type such as Integer, Boolean, or String. You can also change the web performance test plug-in properties later by using the Properties window.

  18. Choose OK.

    The plug-in is added to the Web Test Plug-ins folder.

    Warning

    You might get an error similar to the following when you run a web performance test or load test that uses your plug-in:

    Request failed: Exception in <plug-in> event: Could not load file or assembly '<"Plug-in name".dll file>, Version=<n.n.n.n>, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

    This is caused if you make code changes to any of your plug-ins and create a new DLL version (Version=0.0.0.0), but the plug-in is still referencing the original plug-in version. To correct this problem, follow these steps:

    1. In your web performance and load test project, you will see a warning in references. Remove and re-add the reference to your plug-in DLL.
    2. Remove the plug-in from your test or the appropriate location and then add it back.

Example

The following code creates a customized web performance test plug-in that adds an item to the WebTestContext that represents the test iteration.

After running the web performance test, by using this plug-in you can see the added item that is named TestIteratnionNumber in the Context tab in the Web Performance Results Viewer.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.ComponentModel;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting;

namespace SampleRules
{
    [Description("This plugin can be used to set the ParseDependentsRequests property for each request")]
    public class SampleWebTestPlugin : WebTestPlugin
    {
        private bool m_parseDependents = true;

        public override void PreWebTest(object sender, PreWebTestEventArgs e)
        {
            // TODO: Add code to execute before the test.
        }

        public override void PostWebTest(object sender, PostWebTestEventArgs e)
        {
            // TODO: Add code to execute after the test.
        }

        public override void PreRequest(object sender, PreRequestEventArgs e)
        {
            // Code to execute before each request.
            // Set the ParseDependentsRequests value on the request
            e.Request.ParseDependentRequests = m_parseDependents;
        }

        // Properties for the plugin.
        [DefaultValue(true)]
        [Description("All requests will have their ParseDependentsRequests property set to this value")]
        public bool ParseDependents
        {
            get
            {
                return m_parseDependents;
            }
            set
            {
                m_parseDependents = value;
            }
        }
    }
}

See also