Recording Options

Recording Options

Recording options contains settings that you incorporate while recording a script.

Script option allows you to select the Language in which you want to record the flow. In case of web applications, it will be C language by default and it will not let you change that value.

 Here you can choose the option to generate the Fixed think time after end transaction, the maximum number of lines in action file and to track/close the processes when recording stops. You can choose the options accordingly.

Protocols option shows you which all protocols you selected for recording the script.

In recording options, Script and Protocols options are self-explanatory.

“Recording options” window looks like this

In “Recording” there are 2 options available for a typical web based application. Those 2 options are provided below

-HTML mode of recording

-URL mode of recording

Html based script/HTML mode of recording:

This is the general recording mode we select where the data will be captured at the HTML level and appears in the script in form of GET & POST requests.In this mode of recording, each USER ACTION is recorded as a separate request.

Here we have two advanced options:

(web_link, web_submit_form): This will capture the data in terms of link and form names.

(In other words, it is page level recording and it is contextual recording which means each request is dependent on the previous request)

(web_url, web_submit_data): This will capture the data in terms of link & form data.

(Inother words it is network level recording; it is also called as context less recording, eachrequest is independent of the other requests).

Assume a case where you are given a step by step document that has to be followed. The steps can be like launch the web Application  –> Enter the user name and password and click on Log in  –> Click “View Demo” link –> enter the personal details and click on submit –> View the Demo –> Log out.

An actual novice user would start browsing through the steps 1, 2 and stop if they didn’t find the link “view Demo”.  An actual user (human) can apply his intelligence and probably assume that “click here to get the demo” is same as “View Demo”, but a tool would not – causing the script to be terminated

This is the case where the tool has to enter some data in a form and if the form is not found, the tool will halt the execution of the script.  Every request is directly dependent on the previous request’s response and has high chances of failure with the UI changes to the web application

The advantages of using the HTML recording mode are that the size is very compact and the customization efforts reduced.   However, with UI changes to the web applications the scripts would require much higher maintenance costs.

URL based script/URL mode of recording:

This is generally used for component based testing. Each and every request (js, css, img, gif) will be captured as a separate request and hence the script will be of huge size. This is the reason we always prefer the HTML mode recording. This mode does not depend on the UI of the application, rather the actions associated with the user actions performed on UI. The purpose of having the URL based recording is, if the component communicates with the server occasionally, it may not be recorded by HTML (for example in case of applets). In such situations, we should go for URL mode.

The benefit of having scripts with URL recording mode is that the maintenance cost associated with these are reduced and can be used across various releases of the product making the script less susceptible to changes in the UI .

URL mode of recording is usually used with Non –browser applications e.g. Any thick client activity is generally recorded using the URL mode.

To summarize

Differences between HTML and URL mode of recording

HTML Mode of recording	URL Mode of recording
Records script for every user action that is performed during recording	URL based mode records each and every browser request to the server and resources received from the server
HTML based mode does recording as you perform clicks and doesn’t give you inside information like what is happening behind the recording	URL based mode records each and every step and emulates Javascript code
HTML mode generally contains less dynamic values to correlate	URL mode generally contains much more complex correlation requirements
HTML mode is smaller and is more intuitive to read as the statements are inside the functions corresponding to the user action performed	In the case of URL based, all statements gets recorded into web_CustomRequest()
HTML mode is recommended for browser applications	URL mode is recommended for non-browser applications

“Network options” window looks like this

Port mapping option is needed when recording SSL applications on a non-standard port. Review the list of ports. If the port we are using is not in the list, we can specify the information using the Port Mapping options.

We need to select the form of data capturing in the Network. The three options available are.

Socket Level data

WinINET level data and

Socket Level data and WinINET level data

“HTTP Properties” window looks like this

Advanced option defines the advanced preferences that you might be interested in.

Here you can choose the options to save the snapshot, to generate text checks for each page, can add comments to script for HTTP errors while recording and can filter the content types(ex: image/jpeg,etc..).

Uncheck Correlation during recording, this will disable automatic correlation during recording.

Once the record button is pressed in the VUGen, all information related to the business scenario will be saved to a log file called Recording Log. Based on the recording settingsthat we choose, the script will be created and the entries are logged to Generation Log.