This is a preview release of Flood URL Bag application, intended only for flood developers (or at least powerusers). Flood URL Bag is a Mozilla based application (built with XPCOM/XUL) that makes easy to prepare flood XML test configuration file. When active, it captures (nearly) every request leaving mozilla. You can then fine tune captured requests (change URL, request method, POST body and so on) and save them to XML file, when you're happy with results. Quick'n'easy WYSIWYT (What You See Is What You'll Test) not found in other web performance packages.

Here's a quick look at Flood URL Bag features:

• support for capturing subsequent requests (css, images, applets)
• support for capturing redirects
• capability to output urllist only or complete XML config
• captures POST body (excluding multipart/form-data)
• support for editing captured requests

...and preview of things to come:

• support for multipart/form-data POST's
• support for auth challenges
• support for response templates
• support for on-the-fly response template testing against response body
• support for response template variable management

Here are some screen's showing Flood URL Bag at work:

• a typical work enviroment...
• main window
• editing request
• preferences
• dev preferences
• FireFox icon toolbar

Here is this tiny (about 30K) XPInstall package. You'll need at least Mozilla 1.6 or FireFox 0.8 browser. Earlier versions might work, so you might give a shot before you'll try. On Unix systems you'll need write permissions to $MOZILLA_HOME/chrome directory.

After installation, please restart your browser, and run Flood URL Bag using menus: Tools->Web Development->Flood URL Bag (Mozilla) or by dragging Flood URL Bag icon into your preferred tool bar (FireFox).

WARNING This may seem crazy, but Mozilla *DOESN'T* have an uninstall capability. Manual uninstall requires hand editing some configuration files, so basically it's easier to wipe out entire browser. So if you intend to play around that application, please do so on a clean Mozilla install. You have been warned.

I didn't mention this isn't stable? Whoopsss... my bad. Here are known problems:

1. Neverending 'in progress' state. This is a race condition related to numerous function calls required to mark request as finished. Needles to say, sometimes they don't come in in a fixed order. Fix is on its way.


2. Missing images. This is because of Mozilla's image cache. When some image on certain page apears twice, Mozill'a won't even bother checking 'If-Modified-Since'. It'll use local copy. So Flood URL Bag won't see this request coming. Try disabling Mozilla cache, although it is not guaranteed to make things better. Solution to this problem is at design stage.

If you think you have found another problem, then send an e-mail to test-dev mailing list with description of your problem. To help us fight bugs, you can also post a URL of site being captured, and you can turn on debugging (look for floodurlbag pref variables at about:config) and post JavaScript console output. This will make bug hunting more effective.