RedProbe

RedProbe is a simple HTTP probe that will return status code and a detailed breakdown of the request/response performance metrics. The program also includes a simple assertion mechanism to validate whether the outcome of the operation matches certain criteria.

Status

The software is stable. Due to the more advanced nature of *NIX terminals, the output is remarkably better in Linux and OSX, but it does work acceptably well on Windows as well.

Download

Go to the GitHub Releases Page for RedProbe and download the latest release for your architecture.

Run

You can run RedProbe in to ways:

By providing all the parameters in the CLI

Here are the parameters:

 -a, --annotation=value  Annotation
 -A, --assertion=value   Assertion
 -c, --config=value      Path to a config file
 -f, --format=value      The output format, either
                         'console', 'JSON' or 'HAR' [console]
 -H, --header=value      The headers
 -s, --skip-ssl          Skips SSL validation
 -t, --timeout=value     The request timeout [5s]
 -u, --url=value         The URL
 -X, --method=value      The method [GET]

The bare minimum request is done by providing a URL with -u or --url= as in:

./redprobe -u https://www.example.com

Headers are provided as couples of key/value pairs, separated by a colon, as in:

./redprobe -u https://www.example.com -H 'Accept:text/html' -H 'Key:ABC123'

By providing a YAML configuration file

You can provide a configuration file a substitute of all the command line parameters, as in:

url: https://www.example.com
timeout: 5s
headers:
  user-agent: redChecker/1
assertions:
  - Response.StatusCode == 200
  - Response.Size > 0
  - Response.Metrics.DNS.Milliseconds() < 200
  - Response.Metrics.RT.Seconds() < 2

By providing a multi-document YAML configuration file

You can structure your YAML to contain multiple configuration files. If you do, RedProbe will execute all calls in a sequence. As in:

url: https://www.example.com
timeout: 5s
headers:
  user-agent: redProbe/1
assertions:
  - Response.StatusCode == 200
  - Response.Size > 0
  - Response.Metrics.DNS.Milliseconds() < 200
  - Response.Metrics.RT.Seconds() < 2
---

url: https://github.com/theirish81/redProbe
timeout: 5s
headers:
  user-agent: redProbe/1
assertions:
  - Response.StatusCode == 200
  - Response.Size > 0
  - Response.Metrics.DNS.Milliseconds() < 200
  - Response.Metrics.RT.Seconds() < 2

Assertions and annotations

Assertions

Optionally, you can add assertions as shown in the examples. The purpose of assertions is to set expectations about the response and signal when those expectations are not met. If assertions fail, the program will return with a non-zero status code. You can add an assertions block in the configuration file or add multiple -A arguments in the CLI. Assertions will be considered a pass if they return either true, ok, or 1.

Annotations

Optionally, you can add annotations as shown in the examples. The purpose of annotations is to annotate the outcome with values extracted from the response, for debugging purposes. You can add an annotations block in the configuration file or add multiple -a arguments in the CLI.

Syntax

The root object of all annotations and assertions is Response (mind the capital R).

The base sub-items are:

• StatusCode: an integer representing the response status code

• Size: an integer representing the response size

• IpAddress: a string representing the target IP address The structured sub-items are:

• Metrics: an object containing the metrics

  • Conn: the duration of the connection phase
  • DNS: the duration of the DNS resolution
  • TLS: the duration of the TLS handshake
  • TTFB: time to first byte
  • Transfer: the data transfer time
  • RT: round-trip time

  Each metric can be converted into a numerical representation by appending .Seconds(), .Milliseconds(), .Nanoseconds() as in: `Response.Metrics.DNS.Milliseconds()

• Header: a collection of response headers. Each header can be accessed by invoking:

  • Get(headerName): will return the value of the header with the given name

• JsonMap(): trusting that the response body is a JSON object, the method will parse it and return a map

• JsonArray(): trusting that the response body is a JSON array, will method will parse it and return an array

Assertions examples

Response.Metrics.DNS.Milliseconds() < 200: pass if the DNS resolution time is less than 200 milliseconds Response.JsonMap().id == 1: pass it the JSON object in the response has an ID field that is equal to 1

Annotations examples

response.Header.Get("content-type"): print the response content type header