🕵🏻 Loadmill Agent

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🕵🏻 Loadmill Agent
Running API and Load tests locally or on your servers.
Testing your local environment before publishing the changes helps identifying bugs earlier and speeds up development cycle.
The problem
I want to test my app locally but getting a warning when trying to create a request:
When you try to reach localhost on your browser, you are actually trying to connect to your local computer’s ip address, 127.0.0.1. This local IP address is the same for every computer.
However, Loadmill is a SaaS (software as a service) company. That means that Loadmill’s web server runs on another computer somewhere in the world. Therefore, Loadmill.com will send an HTTP request to its own machine’s localhost ip address and not to your server, resulting in an error response.
You can think of it this way: imagine you are on a vacation abroad, and you want to write a letter to your relatives back home. After you finished writing the letter, you would write on the envelope, “my home” as the target address. The mailman will not understand where to send the letter, of course. The mailman has his own idea of “my home”, but it is not your home, but rather, it’s his home. He will need your public home address in order to send the letter to your relatives. This scenario is equivalent to asking Loadmill (the mailman) to send an HTTP request (the letter) to localhost (“my home”).
The solution
We recommend using our Loadmill Agent (either by npm or Docker) that allows you to run API and Load tests locally or even on your servers if you wish.
Docker image
In case you have Docker installed on your machine all you need to do is to run the following command:
docker run -it --rm -e LOADMILL_AGENT_TOKEN=<your-api-token> loadmill/agent
More info regarding the Docker image and available options can be found here.
npm package
Setup
In order to use the Loadmill Agent you will need to have node.js version 14 or higher installed on your machine and generate an API Token.
Installation
Using npm:
npm i @loadmill/agent -g
npm i @loadmill/agent // in case you can't install it globally.
Using yarn:
yarn add @loadmill/agent -g
Running the agent
If you use the -g option while installing run it like this:
loadmill-agent start -t INSERT_TOKEN_HERE
In case you installed the package locally (without the -g flag) run it like this:
./node_modules/@loadmill/agent/bin/loadmill-agent start -t INSERT_TOKEN_HERE 
The start command accepts the following options:
--token - (REQUIRED) can be retrieved through the UI.
--loads-capacity - (default = 50). Optionally you can supply the number of users this agent can simulate. It can be 0 in order not to run load tests.
--no-api - can be supplied in order to run Load tests only, API tests will run on Loadmill servers.
--pool - can be supplied in order to set the agent pool (the limit is 256 characters). When using multiple Loadmill Agents, this parameter helps you distinguish between running agents. Then, use our npm module with supplying the --pool <pool> parameter to assign test runs to a specific agent.
--config - alternatively, you can supply a path to a yaml file that will contain all the options above.
Extended Example
loadmill-agent start -t INSERT_TOKEN_HERE --no-api --loads-capacity 80
loadmill-agent start -t INSERT_TOKEN_HERE --pool myPoolID
loadmill-agent start --config /path/to/config.yml
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That's it! 🎉
 From now on, tests you are running in Loadmill will run locally or on your server (depends on where you configured them to be run) as long as our Loadmill Agent is running.
You can also use the Loadmill agent docker wrapper, find more information here.
See agent/s running within the Private Agents tab in Loadmill:
Working with insecure certificates
In case you are testing a system that uses https but has a self-signed or invalid SSL certificate, you need to set env var - NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 at the beginning of the start command to run your tests via the Loadmill Agent. It should look like this: NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 loadmill-agent start -t INSERT_TOKEN_HERE IMPORTANT: The Loadmill agent won’t be able to verify that it is talking to the right website in this case.