Converting HTTP web archives (HAR) to JMeter test plans

This recipe shows you how to generate a test script from captured HTTP web requests in your browser. Perform the following steps:

Make sure that the Preserve log checkbox in the Network tab is checked to ensure all the user actions are captured, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

Preserve log checkbox in the Network tab

As shown in the following screenshot, while on the Network tab, right-click to see the Copy All as HAR option:

Copy All as HAR

With the help of built-in browser tools and plugins, a browser is able to capture all interactions between a user and a web application into the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format known as the web archive (HAR). This resulting JSON object includes all the information about each request including HTTP headers, methods, query strings, and so on. Given the JSON object or a file with its content, the HAR to JMX converter can then read, parse, and construct JMeter elements for each user request, similar to what a JMeter HTTP proxy would have done.

For command-line fans who do not wish to go through the Flood IO's website to do a conversion, there's a command-line tool that can be used to achieve the HAR TO JMX conversion. Har2jmeter located at http://seitenbau.github.io/har2JMeter/ is a utility written in the Groovy language. It's still in its infancy, so you might encounter a few quirks here and there. While testing it, one thing we found out is that it currently didn't play well with secure connections (HTTPS). Also, it didn't group requests into logical controllers. We mention it here just to make you aware that it exists and such bugs will probably be fixed in the near future.