The "form" referred to in the manual is an HTML form, which allows the
user to type in a series of parameters into a web page. When the user is finished, he/she typically clicks on a
"submit" button which sends the data to the back end. Form Data Replacement is a feature whereby the
data typed in during the original recording of the business case is replaced with unique values for each virtual
user.
When recording form data, you will see two HTTP requests, one for the request
to get the HTML page containing the form, and a second request sending the contents of the form to the web server.
Since you want to change the contents of the form submitted by the user, you will have to edit the second request
containing those parameters.
The screen shot below shows a typical form with the two requests. Note that the
form was submitted to a servet called "URLTest", which you can see in the URL of the second HTTP request:
To set up form data replacement, edit the web page containing the form by double
clicking on the URL from the Recording Tab, or by selecting the URL in the URL Table, and then executing Edit->Edit
URL (control-E):
The web page editing dialog will appear, giving you access to all of the information
in the HTTP request sent from the browser to the web server. Form Data is stored in the "Content" section
of the request; clicking on any of the two "Content-" fields will bring up the form data editor:
The parameter values will appear in a table, each with a name and a value. The
"Replace With" column describes if the parameter will be replaced at runtime. To either edit the parameters
in place, or specify to replace the form data automatically, double click on one of the rows in the parameter table.
This will bring up the parameter editor:
You can edit the value by hand by simply typing in a new value into the Value:
field. When you click OK that new value will be changed in the recorded HTTP request.
If you would like the value to be replaced during playback, check the "Replace
at Runtime" box and select a vector of form data values from the pulldown menu. These values can be either
imported from text files, or the values can be generated randomly. See Form
Data Management for more details.
The default behavior is for each virtual user to go through the series of values
contained in the form data vector. For example, if the values in a particular series were 4, 5, and 6, each virtual
user would use the values 4, 5, and 6. On the other hand, if Global Sequential Access is chosen, each virtual user
will get a unique value from the series. For example, virtual user one would get a value of 4, virtual user two
would use the value of 5, and virtual user three would receive a value of 6 for the same field.
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