JMeter tests on the protocol layer and not the client layer i.e. JavaScripts, applets, etc. It does not give 100% browser like rendering and will not be able to render HTML pages which restrict it to test the GUI of an application. However, to compensate for these shortcomings, JMeter allows creating assertions based on the tags and text of the page as the HTML file is received by the client. With some knowledge of HTML tags, QA guy can test and verify any elements as you would expect them in the browser.

Test Plan to contain functional validations (or assertions) by incorporating various essential JMeter components, particularly the ‘Response Assertion’ element and ‘Assertion Result’ Listener. By using the User Defined Variable, Configuration element, we have also parameterized several values in order to give our Test Plan better flexibility. In addition, we have observed the result of these assertions as we performed a ‘live’ run of the application under test. An HTTP Request sampler may require to be modified, if there are any changes to the parameter(s) that the sampler sends with each request. Once created, a JMeter Test Plan that contains assertions can then be used and modified in subsequent Regression tests for the application.

High level Approach:
1. Creation of Test Plan which comprises of different requests need to be tested with the details of the response.
2. Setting the Configuration elements, Listeners and Assertions.
3. Setting up of HTTP header manager to capture page header details.
4. User defined variables should be used depending on the scenario and test case design.
Execution: Once the assertions are properly completed, we are expecting that running our Test Plan would pass all the assertions. Passed assertions will not show any error in Assertion Results | Listener installed within the same scope. As for all Listeners, results as captured by the Listeners can be saved and reproduced at a later time. On the other hand, a failed Assertion would show an error message in the same Listener.

Please feel free to post any queries or questions related to above.

Thanks,
Rohit Singh
www.360logica.com