Command to run the Apache benchmark tool (ab) with 200 simultaneous requests until 2000 requests are completed:
# ab -k -c 100 -n 2000 localhost/checkiffileexists.php
Let’s run the test and compare the results. Pay attention to the performance statistics:
As you can see, the performance of the server with the event is highly superior to its prefork counterpart in every aspect of this test.
This is the php code that I’ve saved into a file named checkiffileexists.php:
<?php
$filename = 'test.php';
if (file_exists($filename)) {
echo "The file $filename exists";
} else {
echo "The file $filename does not exist";
}
?>Suppose you wanted to test multiple URL’s concurrently as well? You can do this by creating a shell script, with multiple ab calls. At the end of each line place, this makes the command run in the background and lets the next command start execution. You will also want to redirect the output to a file for each URL using > filename For example:
#!/bin/sh ab -n 100 -c 10 http://127.0.0.1:8300/test.cfm > test1.txt & ab -n 100 -c 10 http://127.0.0.1:8300/scribble.cfm > test2.txt &
The usage info from the ab version installed on my Mac (v2.3) is listed below. As you can see there are many useful options for outputting results, and sending additional data in the request.
Usage: ab [options] [http[s]://]hostname[:port]/path Options are: -n requests Number of requests to perform -c concurrency Number of multiple requests to make -t timelimit Seconds to max. wait for responses -b windowsize Size of TCP send/receive buffer, in bytes -p postfile File containing data to POST. Remember also to set -T -T content-type Content-type header for POSTing, eg. 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' Default is 'text/plain' -v verbosity How much troubleshooting info to print -w Print out results in HTML tables -i Use HEAD instead of GET -x attributes String to insert as table attributes -y attributes String to insert as tr attributes -z attributes String to insert as td or th attributes -C attribute Add cookie, eg. 'Apache=1234. (repeatable) -H attribute Add Arbitrary header line, eg. 'Accept-Encoding: gzip' Inserted after all normal header lines. (repeatable) -A attribute Add Basic WWW Authentication, the attributes are a colon separated username and password. -P attribute Add Basic Proxy Authentication, the attributes are a colon separated username and password. -X proxy:port Proxyserver and port number to use -V Print version number and exit -k Use HTTP KeepAlive feature -d Do not show percentiles served table. -S Do not show confidence estimators and warnings. -g filename Output collected data to gnuplot format file. -e filename Output CSV file with percentages served -r Don't exit on socket receive errors. -h Display usage information (this message) -Z ciphersuite Specify SSL/TLS cipher suite (See openssl ciphers) -f protocol Specify SSL/TLS protocol (SSL2, SSL3, TLS1, or ALL)