Is JavaSamplerClient the right way to test this setup? - jmeter

Question

I have a java server that communicates with java clients over the network. What I want to do is to verify that they are maintaining state and gather performance statistics for the server. I've used JMeter to test web services in the past and thought to use it to test this server.
The clients are pretty simple and only send and receive a few message types. They login to the server and create a session id. Then they can do a number of transactions using that id, get text data, send text data, ping to verify the connection is alive and finally logout.
Initially I thought I'd wrap the client code in a JavaSamplerClient, but having read the javadocs again I'm not sure that is a good idea. JavaSamplerClient looks like it expects to do one thing and return the same kind of data. But I want to not only return the performance numbers, but I want to verify that the state of the client and check that the data is not being corrupted.
Is using JavaSamplerClient in JMeter the right thing to use here or is there a better solution?

Answer 1

JavaSamplerClient can do everything you'll implement.
For instance, if you create your class as follows:
public class MySampler extends AbstractJavaSamplerClient {
#Override
public void setupTest(JavaSamplerContext context) {
return;
}
#Override
public SampleResult runTest(JavaSamplerContext context) {
return null;
}
#Override
public Arguments getDefaultParameters() {
return null;
}
If you don't intent to use GUI for sampler you can omit setupTest and getDefaultParameters methods and leave only runTest one.
Your test code should be placed inside runTest method. It returns an instance of SampleResult which is fully controllable.
for instance:
result.setResponseCode() - set response code based on any condition
result.setResponseMessage() - the same for response message
The bit you're looking for is probably
result.setResponseData() - here you can make your sampler to return anything you want.
Reference material: Beanshell vs JSR223 vs Java JMeter Scripting