Locust load testing - change hatch rate from seconds to minutes?

Question

I'd like to simulate spikey traffic, so that for example:

• in the first 5 minutes there are only 50 users (instant hatch of 50 at time T0)
• then from 5th to 10th minute we have 100 users (instant hatch +50 at T+5)
• then 150 (instant hatch +50 at T+10)
• etc.

Is it possible to create an equal number of users, but instead of doing that every second change that to every xx minutes?

Answer 1

There is no such built in feature (https://github.com/locustio/locust/issues/1353 might solve this if it is ever implemented)

One way to do a workaround is to spawn all your users right away (using a spawn rate of something like 100/s), and have them sleep until it is time to run:

import time
start = time.time()

class User1(HttpUser):
    @task
    def mytask(self):
        # do actual task

class User2(HttpUser):
    @task
    def mytask(self):
        while time.time() - start < 300:
            time.sleep(1)
        # do actual task

class User3(HttpUser):
    @task
    def mytask(self):
        while time.time() - start < 600:
            time.sleep(1)
        # do actual task

...

You can probably do something clever and put it all in one class, but I'll leave that as an exercise :)