Performance log

ChromeDriver supports performance logging, from which you can get events of domains "Timeline", "Network", and "Page", as well as trace data for specified trace categories.

Enable performance logs

Performance logging is NOT enabled by default. So when creating a new session, you have to enable it.

DesiredCapabilities cap = DesiredCapabilities.chrome();
LoggingPreferences logPrefs = new LoggingPreferences();
logPrefs.enable(LogType.PERFORMANCE, Level.ALL);
cap.setCapability(CapabilityType.LOGGING_PREFS, logPrefs);
RemoteWebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://127.0.0.1:9515"), cap);

When enabled, the performance log collects Timeline, Network, and Page events. To also enable tracing, or to customize performance logging, keep reading.

View a complete example of performance logging with default options, written by Michael Klepikov.

Angular Benchpress also uses performance logging.

Tracing and custom logging

If you need to customize performance logging, to enable tracing for example, you can use the perfLoggingPrefs capability (via ChromeOptions). Tracing can be enabled by specifying one or more Chrome trace categories. Read more information about Chrome tracing.

When tracing is enabled, the Timeline domain is implicitly disabled. You still need to enable the performance log with the loggingPrefs capability.

DesiredCapabilities cap = DesiredCapabilities.chrome();
LoggingPreferences logPrefs = new LoggingPreferences();
logPrefs.enable(LogType.PERFORMANCE, Level.ALL);
cap.setCapability(CapabilityType.LOGGING_PREFS, logPrefs);
Map<String, Object> perfLogPrefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
perfLogPrefs.put("traceCategories", "browser,devtools.timeline,devtools"); // comma-separated trace categories
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setExperimentalOption("perfLoggingPrefs", perfLogPrefs);
caps.setCapability(ChromeOptions.CAPABILITY, options);
RemoteWebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://127.0.0.1:9515"), cap);

You can also use perfLoggingPrefs to enable or disable the Network and Page domains individually. For example, you can explicitly enable the Network domain while tracing:

...

Map<String, Object> perfLogPrefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
perfLogPrefs.put("traceCategories", "browser,devtools.timeline,devtools");
perfLogPrefs.put("enableNetwork", true);
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setExperimentalOption("perfLoggingPrefs", perfLogPrefs);
caps.setCapability(ChromeOptions.CAPABILITY, options);

...

If tracing is enabled, ChromeDriver starts a browser-wide trace when Chrome is launched and continues tracing until Chrome closes. When a trace is running, Chrome buffers trace events in memory until the trace is stopped.

Once the trace buffer is full, trace events are no longer be recorded. To avoid a full buffer (and thus lost trace data), ChromeDriver periodically stops the current trace, collects the buffered events, and re-starts tracing at certain points during a test.

Collecting trace events can add overhead to a test, so ChromeDriver only collects trace events at appropriate points during a test. Trace events are only collected on page navigation events and when any ChromeDriver log (such as the performance log) is requested.

There is always a possibility that the buffer still fills up, so ChromeDriver monitors the buffer usage for supported Chrome versions (r263512 and later). If the buffer fills, ChromeDriver logs a warning and adds an entry to the performance log.

Collect log entries

In the test, you can get performance log entries. Read the WebDriver logging documentation for more information.

for (LogEntry entry : driver.manage().logs().get(LogType.PERFORMANCE)) {
  System.out.println(entry.toString());
}

Each entry is a JSON string of the following structure:

{
  "webview": <originating WebView ID>,
  "message": { "method": "...", "params": { ... }} // DevTools message.
}

The method value is the method of the DevTools event. For example, Timeline events have a method of Timeline.eventRecorded for all versions of the protocol up to and including version 1.1 (the latest at the time this was written).

Trace log entries

Tracing is not part of the published DevTools protocol as of version 1.1, so details are provided here.

All trace events have a webview value of "browser," since the events are collected browser-wide.

There are two possible trace event methods:

• tracing.dataCollected: params are a single trace event in the form of a dictionary.
• tracing.bufferUsage: params contain a single error key, with a message indicating that the DevTools trace buffer filled during the test.

Here is an example trace event:

{
  "webview":"browser",
  "message":{
    "method":"Tracing.dataCollected",
    "params":{
      "args":{"layerTreeId":1},
      "cat":"cc,devtools",
      "name":"DrawFrame",
      "ph":"i",
      "pid":11405,
      "s":"t",
      "tid":11405,
      "ts":3846117219.0,
      "tts":1134680
    }
  }
}