Feature Request: Add option to handle binary response as text

[Former user]

In our particular scenario our server responds with binary frames, however when the response is treated as binary-encoded text then we can view the response in the view results tree.

Right now we have to add a BeanShell listener to each reponse in order to set the following command:

// Set the response data type as text to display in "View Results Tree"
sampleResult.setDataType( org.apache.jmeter.samplers.SampleResult.TEXT );

Please add this as an option to the WebSocket Single Read Sampler

Extra Bonus: As our server accepts json plain-text as the request, however responds with a binary response, I can never use the request-response sampler, as the sampler would assumes/awaits a text frame from the server when I choose to send my requests as plain-text.

[Peter Doornbosch]

Thanks for your feedback. It's good to know more people need binary websocket support and also want display support.

However, i think we should add this functionality where it belongs, and this is in JMeter. JMeter already has support for viewing response data in various formats, but unfortunately binary format is not one of them. Fortunately, adding a new renderer is not as difficult as i initially thought it was, as this screenshot of my first proof-of-concept shows: (note the "Binary" label in the type selector!), so this is the way to go for displaying binary responses.

As for the "extra bonus": that would not come for free with this addition, because the request/response sampler expects a text-frame in return on sending a text-frame, so in your case, it would still throw an "unexpected frame type" exception.

[Peter Doornbosch]

But i will add the binary renderer: https://bitbucket.org/pjtr/jmeter-websocket-samplers/branch/renderbinary

[Peter Doornbosch]

Support for rendering binary responses is included in release 0.8

[Martin Kovacs]

@Anonymous

Where did you add

sampleResult.setDataType( org.apache.jmeter.samplers.SampleResult.TEXT );

I would like to have this feature too! ;)

[Peter Doornbosch]

Why??

[Martin Kovacs]

Because of this problem:

https://bitbucket.org/pjtr/jmeter-websocket-samplers/issues/49/problems-with-sending-and-receiving-binary

[Peter Doornbosch]

You can simply view the binary data in the Results, see screenshot above.

Doing something as setDataType(TEXT) doesn't make sense, because (usually) the binary data won't be text (if it was, why use a binary frame?) and trying to interpret it as text will fail.