Web Transaction Monitor configuration

The Web Transaction Monitor configuration dialog has two tabs. The first one allows configuring, recording, and replaying the sequence of HTTP Requests which form a transaction. The second one contains additional settings which should be used during transaction replay (such as browser emulation, the proxy server address, etc.).

HTTP Requests

Although a list of HTTP Requests for transaction may be created manually the most effective and easy way is to use the WTM Recorder (which looks like a web browser). Press the Record button to invoke the WTM Recorder and capture all the HTTP Requests sent to the web server automatically while you navigate a web site.

To visually check that a transaction has been recorded flawlessly and the resulting monitor will work correctly press the Replay button.

In the upper part of the form there is a list of Requests forming the transaction. Requests may be added and removed using the Add Request and Delete Request buttons on the right. To change the order of Requests drag the URL using the mouse and drop it to a new position.

In the lower part of the form there are editable fields which are used to modify the properties of a Request currently selected in the list:

• In the Request method field either GET or POST can be set. For POST requests you may further specify whether "multipart/form-data" encoding should be used for parameters. This is used for submitting forms that contain files, non-ASCII or binary data.
• In the URL field the URL of the Request is entered.

• The List of parameters is a list of parameters to be passed along with the HTTP request. Parameters may be added and removed using the Add parameter and Delete parameter buttons. Each parameter has a name and value. The value should be a URL encoded (percent encoded) string.

  There are two kinds of special parameter values:

  Value	Description
  $hidden	This value means that during a transaction replaying value for this parameter should be taken from the HTTP result obtained at the previous step. This allows to process form submittions with hidden parameters.
  $file(<filename>, <content-type>, <path>)	This one is used to specify a file on the disk as a parameter of a POST request (used for file uploading). The parameters are: filename is the name of a file as it will be reported to the web server content-type - is a string specifying the MIME type of a file (may be "image/gif", "video/mpeg", etc.) path is the full path to a file on the disk "multipart/form-data" encoding should be used in Requests with these parameters.

• The Response validation field: specify whether a particular string should be searched in the HTTP response and whether or not it should be present. The default setting is 'None' (no response validation).

Monitoring Settings

• The Browser settings allow to specifying whether a JavaScript should be executed during transaction replay and if Cookies should be accepted. Besides, any User-Agent string may be chosen from the list to emulate popular Web browsers. The default setting is to use the custom string - 'IPHost Network Monitor'.
• The Page resources settings allow specifying monitor behavior according to the external resources loaded by a web page. One may disable the downloading of Image, JavaScript or CSS files say to reduce Internet traffic generated by the monitor. Besides, one may specify how the monitor state should be changed if any of the resources were unavailable during polling. There are two options. The first one is to just switch the monitor to the Down state. The other one (the default) is to remain in the OK state and write a summary of the problem into the monitor log.
• The Ignored resources section allows listing resources which will not be loaded during polling so their availability will not affect monitoring results. Enter the URLs of corresponding resources into the text edit field, one URL per line. An asterisk ('*') wildcard may be used to match a group of URLs or a resource with random URL parts which change each time the monitor performs polling.
• The Proxy server settings section specifies if a proxy server should be used. One may specify the Host and Port of a proxy server; Username and Password in case the proxy server requires authentication. By default, direct connection is established.
• The HTTPS setting section allows specifying if SSL-related errors should be ignored during polling. By default, any SSL-related error causes the monitor to report problem details to the monitor log and to switch to the Down state.
• The HTTP authentication section allows specifying credentials (Username and Password) to be supplied to the HTTP server in case it requires authentication.

WTM Recorder

On activating the WTM Recorder enter a starting URL (by default, the hostname from the monitor settings is used) and press Start. After the first page is loaded you may continue browsing (follow links, submit forms, etc.).

After each step the validation string may be recorded and associated with the HTTP Request just captured. To do so select any text in the page and press the Set selected text as response validation string button.

To save a recorded transaction press the Finish button. The list of HTTP Requests and parameters will be automatically filled with the data captured. To check that a transaction has been captured successfully press the Replay button in the configuration dialog.

After a transaction is recorded a dialog with a list of unavailable resources (if any) is displayed. Press Yes if you want to add them to the Ignored resources list