Reference
Extensions & Plugins
hls

hls - HLS (HTTP Live Streaming)

Overview

The artillery-plugin-hls plugin enables HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) support in Artillery's HTTP scenarios.

With the plugin enabled, when a request to an M3U8 playlist is made, Artillery will parse the playlist, pick one of the alternative streams, and download its segments (.ts files).

This plugin is only compatible with the http engine.

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)

HTTP Live Streaming (also known as HLS) is an HTTP-based media streaming communications protocol implemented by Apple Inc. as part of its QuickTime, Safari, OS X, and iOS software. Client implementations are also available in Microsoft Edge, Firefox and some versions of Google Chrome. Support is widespread in streaming media servers.

Source: HTTP Live Streaming (opens in a new tab) on Wikipedia

Additional reading:

Usage

Install the plugin

npm install -g artillery-plugin-hls

Load the plugin in your test configuration

config:
  target: "https://video.example.com"
  plugins:
    hls: {}

Make a request to an M3U8 playlist

To stream an HLS-encoded video, make a request to an m3u8 playlist, and set the hls attribute to {} to use the default options, or customize streaming options:

scenarios:
  - name: "Stream an HLS video"
    flow:
      - get:
          url: "/streams/xyz0123/xyz0123.m3u8"
          hls:
            concurrency: 2
            streamSelector:
              resolution:
                width: 320
                height: 184
            throttle: 100

Set additional HTTP attributes (cookies, custom headers etc)

Any standard HTTP request attributes may be used in requests to M3U8 playlists, e.g. a cookie-protected playlist endpoint may be retrieved with:

scenarios:
  - name: "Stream an HLS video"
    flow:
      - get:
          url: "/streams/xyz0123/xyz0123.m3u8"
          headers:
            Cookie: name=value; name2=value2;
          hls:
            concurrency: 2
            streamSelector:
              resolution:
                width: 320
                height: 184
            throttle: 100

HLS Configuration

The following options are supported on the hls attribute:

  • concurrency - the number of segments to download concurrently; defaults to 4
  • throttle - set to a number (in kb/sec) to throttle bandwidth available to download that stream
  • streamSelector - specify how an alternative stream should be selected; defaults to a random stream.

streamSelector options

  • resolution - set width and height to pick the stream that matches
  • name - set to match on the NAME attribute of a stream
  • bandwidth - set to a number to select a specific bandwidth; or to "min"/"max" to select the lowest/highest bandwidth
  • index - set to a number to select the alternative stream at that index in the playlist or to "random" to select a stream at random

Reported Metrics

The plugin adds a number of custom metrics to Artillery reports:

  • HLS: segment download started - the number of individual segments (.ts files) requested from the server
  • HLS: segment download completed - the number of segments downloaded
  • HLS: segment download time - the amount of time it's taken to download a segment
  • HLS: stream download time - the amount of time it's taken to download an entire stream

Debugging

Set DEBUG=plugin:hls when running your tests to print out helpful debugging messages.

DEBUG=plugin:hls artillery run my-script.yaml
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