Swarm

An elegant Java client for Locust

1. Motivation

IMHO, Locust4j a basic implementation for Locust clients written in Java. It has so many restrictions, including:

• The code base is not organized well

• Not so performant with blocking queues

• AbstractTask does NOT support async operations

• Slow start-up time (mostly by Utils.getNodeID())

• Insufficient usage of threading. Locust4j will use N threads to stimulate N users. A big N will result in performance degradation (due to context switching of threads)

• Not well-supported for async operations

Based on implementation of Locust4j, Swarm is completely re-written to address all issues above, with some additional features:

• Auto detect connection status to Locust master hosts and reponse back.

• A better model to stimulate concurrent users (with disruptors)

2. Implementation

• LMAX Disruptor for non-blocking queues

• Google Guava for rate limiting

• Jeromq + MessagePack for working with Locust masters

3. Installation

Before using Swarm, you must declare it as a dependency of your Maven project. For example:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.bigsonata.swarm</groupId>
    <artifactId>locust-swarm</artifactId>
    <version>1.1.6</version>
</dependency>

You also have to add following dependencies:

<dependency>
    <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
    <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.3</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
    <artifactId>logback-core</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.3</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.msgpack</groupId>
    <artifactId>msgpack-core</artifactId>
    <version>0.8.13</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.zeromq</groupId>
    <artifactId>jeromq</artifactId>
    <version>0.4.3</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.lmax</groupId>
    <artifactId>disruptor</artifactId>
    <version>3.3.7</version>
</dependency>

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.google.guava/guava -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
    <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
    <version>23.0</version>
</dependency>

4. How to write your benchmarks

4.1 Overview

Swarm uses the term of Cron to refer to repeating tasks defined by you.

Life cycle of a Cron-based instance can be described in the following diagram:

Swarm is responsible for cloning, initializing crons.

4.2 Cron anatomy

// Here is an abridged version of class Cron
public abstract class Cron implements Cloneable, Runnable {
  public Cron(Props props) {
    this.props = props;
  }

  public abstract void process();

  public abstract Cron clone();

  public void recordFailure(long responseTime, String error) {
    // ..
  }

  public void recordSuccess(long responseTime, long contentLength) {
    // ..
  }

  public void recordSuccess(long responseTime) {
    // ..
  }

  @Override
  public void run() {
    // ...
    process();
  }

  public abstract void dispose();

  public abstract void initialize();
}

Each cron has its own props which defines type & name (to display on the Web interface):

public class Props {
  protected String type = "default";
  protected String name = "cron";
  protected int weight = 1;
  protected boolean async = false;

  public static Props create() {
    return new Props();
  }

  public static Props createAsync() {
    return new Props()
        .setAsync(true);
  }


  public Props setType(String type) {
    // ..
  }

  public Props setName(String name) {
    // ..
  }

  public Props setWeight(int weight) {
    // ..
  }

  public Props setAsync(boolean async) {
    // ..
  }
}

NOTE: A cron must specify how it works: synchronously or asynchronously

Inside each cron, there are 4 must-overridden methods

• clone: you should let Swarm know how to clone your Cron :D
• initialize : It's a great place for you to initiate connections (if you want to use pooling mechanism)
• process: which is repeatedly executed to perform your tests and report results
• dispose: Swarm will invoke this method to dispose any resources allocated by crons

4.3 Define your crons

You need to define your loading test by deriving class Cron:

For example, in our AsyncCron:

public class TimerCron extends Cron {
  public TimerCron() {
    super(Props.create().setName("timer").setAsync(false));
  }

  @Override
  public void process() {
    try {
      System.out.println("> Processing...");
      long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
      Thread.sleep(1000);
      long duration = System.currentTimeMillis() - start;
      recordSuccess(duration);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }

  @Override
  public Cron clone() {
    return new TimerCron();
  }

  @Override
  public void dispose() {
  }

  @Override
  public void initialize() {
  }
}

4.4 Finalize

After defining your crons, finally you need to instruct Swarm to start:

Locust.Builder.newInstance()
    .setMasterHost(masterHost)
    .setMasterPort(masterPort)

    // Optionally set the interval (in ms) to report statistics
    // Default: 2000
    .setStatInterval(2000)

    // Optionally set a seed number to generate nodeId
    .setRandomSeed(0)

    // Optionally set the number of threads to stimulate Crons
    // Default: 8
    .setThreads(8)

    // Optionally set the number of maximum requests per second
    .setMaxRps(1000)

    // Register cron tasks
    .setCrons(new TimerCron());
    .build()

5. Tips

• To effectively benchmark with Locust, we may need to use connection pooling

• See the demo in src/main/java/com.bigsonata/example

6. Contributions

If you find anything wrong or would like to contribute in any way, feel free to create a pull request/open an issue/send me a message. Any comments are welcome!

7. History

v1.1.6

• Released in 26/03/2023
• Fixed a compatibility issue with Locust 2.x. Thank you jayudey-wf for his PR

v1.1.5

• Released in 22/10/2021
• Fixed a compatibility issue with Locust on recoding Occurrences (with this PR)

v1.1.4

• Released in 30/05/2020
• Fixed a compatibility issue with Locust v0.14.6 (reported here)

v1.1.3

• Released in 26/02/2020
• Fixed a compatibility issue with Locust v0.14.4. Thank you gungjodi for his PR

v1.1.0

• Released in 29/12/2019
• Fixed a compatibility issue wit Locust with version > v0.10.0. Thank you BogdanLivadariu for suggesting solutions.
• Locust Builder to include setCrons
• Refactored code & documentation

v1.0.1

• Released in 10/10/2018
• Increased the internal buffer size to 32k (which effectively affect our Crons' througput)

v1.0.0

• Released in 13/08/2018
• Simplified APIs
• Used a better mechanism for scheduling crons. This mechanism effectively stimulates hatching users gradually

v0.1.2

• Released in 27/06/2018
• Fixed a bug in processing hatch rates (PR by @HughZurname)
• Allowed Locust to specify the maximum requests per second (PR by @jaymoid)

v0.1.0

• Released in 26/05/2018
• Initial release