What are synthetic transactions?

A synthetic transaction is a group of one or more logically related interactions (steps) that represent a business-critical user flow, such as the login process or a checkout flow.

Splunk Synthetic Monitoring generates the following additional metrics for each synthetic transaction:

• Duration: Total duration for the synthetic transaction

• Requests: Total number of requests made during the synthetic transaction

• Size: Total size of the content loaded during the synthetic transaction

You can create multiple synthetic transactions in a given test to measure size, duration, and requests for multiple workflows across multiple pages.

What are steps?

Steps are interactions with a webpage that require user input. By adding steps to your browser test, you can simulate choices or interactions that a user makes and test how your application behaves in response. Sample steps include:

• Clicking a link

• Entering information in a field

• Selecting a value from a drop-down menu

• Accepting or dismissing an alert

• Running and saving values from JavaScript

• Saving text from an element

You can identify specific page elements involved in these steps by their ID, name, XPATH, CSS Path, link, or JS path. Use developer tools to interact with the DOM (inspector) and JavaScript (console) to identify and interact with the elements of a site.

To learn more about all available types of steps, see Types of steps you can include in your browser tests.

A step doesn’t generate its own dedicated metrics, but it counts toward the metrics for the synthetic transaction it belongs to. Additionally, when a step triggers a new page load, the page load triggers a set of page load metrics.

What are assertions?

Assertions are checks to see what state an object exists in, for example if text is present or an element is visible. An assertion is a type of step. The assertions you can include in your browser tests are described in Types of steps you can include in your browser tests.

You can make an assertion on two values. Add two parameters along with the comparison that you would like to perform between the two. There are three types of comparisons: string, numeric, and regular expression. For string and numeric comparisons, values are coerced to the comparison type before the comparison is made. For a regular expression comparison, the first parameter is a string and the second parameter is a regular expression. An assertion step fails if the assertion is false when the step runs.

• Use matches to compare the string to a regex pattern.

• Use contains checks for a substring.

Types of steps you can include in your browser tests

Add synthetic transactions to your browser test

Follow these steps to create a browser test with synthetic transactions:

1. From the Splunk Synthetic Monitoring landing page, click Add new test > Browser test to create a new browser test.

2. While creating your browser test, select Edit steps or synthetic transactions. Your current configuration and detector selections are preserved and the Add synthetic transactions view opens.

3. Enter a name for your synthetic transaction, such as Log in or Begin search.

4. Enter a name for the first step in your synthetic transaction.

5. Select a step type from the pull-down menu.

6. If your step type requires you to identify an element by Selector, enter the following.

   • Selector type: Specify the selector type (ID, name, XPATH, CSS Path, link, or JS path).

   • Selector path: Specify the path used to identify the selector you’re using, conforming to the selector type you chose.

7. If your step type requires that you enter a Value, you can either type a raw value, or use a built-in, custom, or global variable here. You can select a variable name from the Variables tab to copy it and paste it in the field where you’d like it to be entered.

8. If your step type has the option to Wait for navigation, select the checkbox if you’d like the test to wait for a 2 second delay to allow the specified action to be executed.

9. (Optional) Create additional steps and synthetic transactions using the + Step and + Synthetic transaction buttons. Click and drag steps and synthetic transactions to rearrange their order.

10. (Optional) Use the Test settings tab to adjust your test configuration settings. See Advanced test configurations to learn more.

11. (Optional) Use the Detectors tab to add detectors to your test. See Detectors and alerts to learn more.

12. When you’re satisfied with your transactional browser test, select Save.

Import a JSON file generated from Google Chrome Recorder

To simplify the test creation process, make a recording using Google Chrome Recorder. Then, import the JSON file to Splunk Synthetic Monitoring to automatically import the steps in the workflow instead of adding each individual interaction you want to track. Recordings are especially helpful for complex user flows, or tests that have a large number of steps.

Create a Google Chrome Recorder JSON file

For steps on how to make a Google Chrome recording, see Record, replay, and measure user flows in the Chrome Developer user guide in Google documentation.

Requirements:

• In Google Chrome Recorder, select either CSS or XPATH for Selector type to record.

• Browser tests run in one Browser tab only. Your recording can’t span multiple tabs.

Import a Google Chrome Recorder JSON file

Follow these steps to import a JSON file from Google Chrome Recorder to a new or existing browser test.

1. In Splunk Synthetic Monitoring, select Edit on an existing browser test to open the test configuration page, or create a new test.

2. Select Import.

3. Upload the Google Chrome Recorder JSON file.

4. If a step is not supported, edit or delete that step in the test configuration page.

5. (Optional) Add a name to each step.

6. Save your changes.

Troubleshoot unsupported steps

If your recording contains unsupported steps, you need to edit the step to reformat it into one of the supported browser step types. The following table shows how Google Chrome Recorder step names and code snippets map to their counterparts in browser tests. These examples use Buttercup Games, a fictitious gaming company.

navigate

{
 // Google Chrome Recorder
  "type": "navigate",
  "url": "www.buttercupgames.com",
  "assertedEvents": [
     {
        "type": "navigation",
        "url": "www.buttercupgames.com",
        "title": "Buttercup Games"
     }
  ]
  }

go_to_url

{
// Splunk Synthetic Monitoring code snippet
"name": "Go to URL",
"type": "go_to_url",
"url": "www.buttercupgames.com",
"wait_for_nav": true
}

clickwith resulting navigation

{
// Google Chrome Recorder
   "type": "click",
   "target": "main",
   "selectors": [
      [
         "div:nth-of-type(2) > div:nth-of-type(2) a > div"
      ],
      [
         "xpath//html/body/main/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div/a/div"
      ]
   ],
   "offsetY": 211,
   "offsetX": 164,
   "assertedEvents": [
      {
         "type": "navigation",
         "url": "www.buttercupgames.com/product/example",
         "title": "Buttercup Games"
      }
   ]
}

click_elementwith resulting navigation:

{
 // Splunk Synthetic Monitoring code snippet

    "name": "",
    "type": "click_element",
    "selector_type": "css",
    "selector": "div:nth-of-type(2) > div:nth-of-type(2) a > div",
    "wait_for_nav": true
 }

clickwithout resulting navigation:

{
 // Google Chrome Recorder
 "type": "click",
  "target": "main",
  "selectors": [
     [
        "div:nth-of-type(2) > div:nth-of-type(2) a > div"
     ],
     [
        "xpath//html/body/main/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div/a/div"
     ]
  ],
  "offsetY": 211,
  "offsetX": 164,
  "assertedEvents": []

  }

click_elementwithout resulting navigation:

{
// Splunk Synthetic Monitoring code snippet

   "name": "",
   "type": "click_element",
   "selector_type": "css",
   "selector": "div:nth-of-type(2) > div:nth-of-type(2) a > div",
   "wait_for_nav": false
}

change:

{
 // Google Chrome Recorder
     "type": "change",
     "value": "5",
     "selectors": [
        [
           "#quantity"
        ],
        [
           "xpath///*[@id=\"quantity\"]"
        ]
     ],
     "target": "main"
     }

enter_value:

{
// Splunk Synthetic Monitoring code snippet
      "name": "",
      "type": "enter_value",
      "selector_type": "id",
      "selector": "quantity",
      "option_selector_type": "index",
      "option_selector": "5",
      "wait_for_nav": false
      }

waitForElement:

{
// Google Chrome Recorder
      "type": "waitForElement",
      "selectors": [
         [
            "body",
            "#homepage_example",
            ".css-4t2fjl",
            ".eanm77i0"
         ]
      ]
      }

assert_element_present:

{
// Splunk Synthetic Monitoring code snippet
      "name": "",
      "type": "assert_element_present",
      "wait_for_nav": false,
      "selector_type": "css",
      "selector": "body,#homepage_example, .css-4t2fjl, .eanm77i0"
   }

waitForElementvisible false:

{
// Google Chrome Recorder
   "type": "waitForElement",
   "selectors": [
      [
         "body",
         "#homepage_product_brand-example",
         ".css-4t2fjl",
         ".eanm77i0"
      ]
   ],
   "visible": false
}

assert_element_not_present:

{
// Splunk Synthetic Monitoring code snippet
      "name": "",
      "type": "assert_element_not_present",
      "wait_for_nav": false,
      "selector_type": "css",
      "selector": "body,#homepage_product_brand-example"
      }

customStep:

{
// Google Chrome Recorder
   "type": "customStep",
   "timeout": 5000,
   "target": "main",
   "name": "customParam",
   "parameters": {}
}

run_javascript:

{
// Splunk Synthetic Monitoring code snippet
   "name": "Unsupported step customStep",
   "type": "run_javascript",
   "value": "",
   "wait_for_nav": false
}