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Overview

While testing, it's crucial to simulate user behavior as realistically as possible. One key aspect of this simulation is introducing waits or pauses that a typical user might experience, like reading a webpage or waiting for some data. By default, LoadForge's wait_time attribute allows you to set such pauses. This guide will delve deeper into customizing these waits and understanding their applications.

wait_time vs. time.sleep

There are two primary ways to introduce waits in your tests:

1. wait_time: This attribute specifies the pause between tasks. For example, once load_page concludes, the simulated user would wait for the duration specified by wait_time before initiating the next task. In our example below, after the load_page task concludes, a user will pause for a duration anywhere between 10 to 20 seconds.

2. time.sleep: This function allows for more specific pauses, right at the point it's called within your test. So if you want a user to pause immediately after a particular HTTP request and before another, time.sleep can be used.

Example Code

Let's examine an example:

import random
from locust import HttpUser, TaskSet, task, between
import time

class AwesomeUser(HttpUser):
    # User waits between 10 to 20 seconds after completing each task.
    wait_time = between(10, 20)

    @task(1)
    def load_page(self):
        self.client.get('/page1')

        # Here, the user waits between 10 to 60 seconds, 
        # simulating a pause on page1 before navigating to page2.
        time.sleep(random.randint(10, 60))

        self.client.get('/page2')

        # This simulates that a user pauses on page2 for exactly 20 seconds.
        time.sleep(20)

This test will simulate a user accessing /page1, waiting for a duration between 10 to 60 seconds (perhaps reading content or interacting with elements), and then navigating to /page2, where they pause again for a fixed 20 seconds.