• Request parameters. Specifies whether or not a sent request should include an equals character after the parameter name if its value is empty (e.g.: a request may be sent as /page.jsp?myparam= rather than /page.jsp?myparam).

• Advanced definition. Enables the user to configure the referrer of the current request. The referrer is the request containing the link to the current request. By default, the referrer is established during the recording phase. You may alter the referrer by clicking on the Change referrer button. When altering the referrer, make sure that the new referrer's request call precedes the current request's call in the Virtual User definition.

  The referrer is used when a request is:

  • a link or form extractor

    In this case, NeoLoad fetches the link or form definition in the server response to the referrer.

  • a redirect

    In this case, NeoLoad fetches the value of the Location header in the server response to the referrer.

• Form charset. Denotes the charset used to encode the form parameters (UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ...). By default, NeoLoad uses an algorithm similar to the one used by web browsers to determine which charset to use: NeoLoad uses the charset of the HTML page containing the form. If the charset is not found, "iso-8859-1" is used.

  Do not confuse this charset, used to convert characters into bytes, with plain URL Character Encoding, which converts, for example, the space character into %20. Specifically, URL Character Encoding differs according to the charset used.

• Variable name. The name of the variable automatically created to contain the value extracted.

• Starting with. The phrase in the server response appearing immediately before the value to be extracted.

• Followed by. The definition of the string's main body. The extracted string is the concatenation of all the parts selected for extraction.

• Ending with. The phrase in the server response appearing immediately after the value to be extracted.

• Occurrence to extract in the page. If the definition is matched more than once, select the occurrence to be used. The default value is 1. To use a random occurrence, enter 0. To use all occurrences (useful with loops) use a negative value such as -1.

  When the occurrence number is negative, all the matched occurrences are processed. The following variables are automatically created:

  • <VariableName>_matchNr - the number of occurrences found; can be 0.

  • <VariableName>_n, where n = 1,2,3 etc - the strings as generated by the value template.

  • <VariableName>_n_gm, where m=0,1,2 - the groups matching n

  • <VariableName> - always attached to the default value

• Variable name. The name of the variable automatically created to contain the value extracted.

• Extract the value from. Extract the value from either the body of the server response, the headers of the server response or the content of a NeoLoad variable. Extracting a variable from the content of another variable, allows to extract a content with several steps. First extract a part of the response based on a regular expression, then use another regular expression to extract a part of it.

  Note

  The extractors are ordered and executed in the definition order. You can reorder the extractors using the arrows buttons.

• Regular expression to match. The regular expression used to extract the value. Within the expression, the parts to be extracted must be enclosed in brackets (valid: value="(.+?)", invalid: value=".+?"). Please refer to the Regular Expressions Guide for help on regular expressions.

• Occurrence to extract in the page. If the definition is matched more than once, select the occurrence to be used. The default value is 1. To use a random occurrence, enter 0. To use all occurrences (useful with loops) use a negative value such as -1.

  When the occurrence number is negative, all the matched occurrences are processed. The following variables are automatically created:

  • <VariableName>_matchNr - the number of occurrences found; can be 0.

  • <VariableName>_n, where n = 1,2,3 etc - the strings as generated by the value template.

  • <VariableName>_n_gm, where m=0,1,2 - the groups matching n

  • <VariableName> - always attached to the default value

• Value template. The template used to construct the value. This is an arbitrary string containing special elements that refer to groups within the regular expression (a group is a dynamic portion of the regular expression set within brackets): $0$ refers to the entire text matching the expression, $1$ refers to group 1, $2$ refers to group 2, and so on. Using an illegal group will return an error of the type <NL-Illegal-groupIndex> during the test. This typically arises when no brackets are specified in the regular expression to be matched.

Examples

• Extracting from the server response body. Given the following content: Your order number Mr Smith is:12345; and that the string to be extracted is '12345', to be used in a subsequent request.

  The variable extractor is defined thus:

  Variable name: 'MyVariable'
  Extract from: 'Message body'
  Regular expression to be matched: 'Your order number(.+)? is:([0-9]+);'
  Occurrence within the page: '1'
  Value template: '$2$' as it's the order number that must be extracted and not the name of the person. Use $1$ to obtain the name. ($0$ would return the complete matched text: 'Your order number Mr Smith is:12345;')
  Default value: '-1' for example.
  

• Extracting from the server response header: 

  Extract from: 'Header'
  Regular expression to be matched: 'MyHeader: (.*)'
  Occurrence within page: '1'
  Value template:'$1$'
  

• WSDL parameters mode

  This mode is available if a WSDL file has been defined. It allows the call parameters to be entered based on the WSDL definition. See the section called “Editing the parameters extracted from the WSDL”.

• XML mode

  This mode allows the request to be edited directly in XML format. See the section called “Editing the XML content”.