E2E-Loader: A Tool to Generate Performance Tests from End-to-End GUI-Level Tests
| Authors | Sergio Di Meglio, , and Sergio Di Martino. |
| conference | ICST 2025 - 18th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation. |
Abstract
Performance testing is essential for ensuring that web applications deliver a satisfactory user experience under varying workloads. Crafting meaningful workloads is a key challenge, addressed in previous research by analyzing system logs that reflect real user behaviors. However, these approaches face limitations: they require the system under test to be deployed to collect usage data, offer limited automation for managing data dependencies, and often lack support for modern protocols like WebSocket.
We present E2E-Loader, a tool for automating the generation of performance testing workloads for Web Applications. E2E-Loader leverages existing End-to-End (E2E) GUI-level test cases to create workloads, allowing its use at early stages of development before user data is available. The tool fully supports HTTP and WebSocket-based interactions and includes customizable heuristics to detect data dependencies automatically.
E2E-Loader has been evaluated in previous research in an industrial case study, demonstrating that it produces workloads comparable in quality to those manually designed by practitioners, with significantly less effort and time. The tool and its source code are openly available to support researchers and practitioners in advancing performance testing practices.
Tool demo screencast
A screencast showcasing E2E-Loader in function is available on YouTube.