timr 0.2.0

timr is a Python utility for timing how long it takes to access an HTTP resource and for generating summary statistics about that.

Developer comments

I was working on a project and needed to optimize how long it took to download a resource. Of course, optimizing anything is difficult without good numbers. This script was a way to track the times and generate some semi-useful data about them.

Installation

pip install timr

Usage

Generally, before you start optimizing your resource, you'll need a baseline:

timr fetch -u http://mysite-wow.org -m "initial timing" -n10 -otimings.csv

You'll run something like this a lot. Let's optimize it by pulling the options that won't change into a file. We'll call it fetch.cfg.

--url
http://mysite-wow.org
--data
name=Eric
--data
age=42
--times
10
--output
timings.csv

Now we can refer to that file on the command line using a @ prefix:

timr fetch @fetch.cfg -m "initial timing"

From this point on, after making a change, re-run this with a different message:

timr fetch @fetch.cfg -m "improved caching"

When you want to get an idea of how things are going, run the report task:

timr report --input timings.csv --output summary.csv

For more information about the fields in these files, see the sections about those tasks below.

Tasks

fetch

$ timr fetch --help

usage: timr fetch [-h] [-M METHOD] -u URL [-H HEADER] [-d DATA] [-m MESSAGE]
 [-S] [-n N] [-o OUTPUT]

optional arguments:
 -h, --help show this help message and exit
 -M METHOD, --method METHOD
 The HTTP method to use. Default is "get".
 -u URL, --url URL The URL to test.
 -H HEADER, --header HEADER
 A header tag to include.
 -d DATA, --data DATA Key-value pairs to encode as POST data. You can
 specify this more than once. Including this implies
 -MPOST.
 -m MESSAGE, --message MESSAGE
 A message for this run.
 -S, --no-sha Don't use SHA hashing to test the request response.
 -n N, --times N The number of times to download the request. Default
 is 4.
 -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
 The file to output to. Default is STDOUT.

This downloads the resource in --url --times times. Optionally, each time it computes a SHA hash of the result, so you can make sure nothing changes.

The output is CSV and has these fields:

- time — A timestamp for the run.
- session_id — A globally unique ID for tracking this run.
- message — A message describing this run. This is set with the --message argument.
- sha — The SHA hash of the response.
- size — The number of characters in the response.
- elapsed — The number of seconds the response took.

report

usage: timr report [-h] [-i INPUT] [-o OUTPUT]

optional arguments:
 -h, --help show this help message and exit
 -i INPUT, --input INPUT
 The file containing timings. Default is STDIN.
 -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
 The file to output to. Default is STDOUT.

This takes the output of the fetch task and creates some statistics.

The output is CSV and has these fields:

- session_id — The globally unique session ID.
- message — The message describing the run, set when running fetch.
- min — The minimum elapsed time for the run.
- max — The maximum elapsed time for the run.
- mean — The mean elapsed time for the run.
- s — The estimated sample standard deviation from the mean for the run.


Product's homepage

Requirements:

· Python