Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to change my application to test it through FriendRunner?
No, the code that you test with should be the code that you deploy. The one small change that you do need to make however, is the Facebook secret that is generated for you when you register your application with Facebook, and is used for authentication. Revealing this secret to a third party violates Facebook's Terms of Use, so you should temporarily change yours to a value we'll provide.
What's the maximum number of virtual users I can run a test with?
We designed FriendRunner to scale well so that developers could run large load tests with it. We are not aware of any limitation on the maximum number of virtual users.
Can I define the types of virtual users I want to test with?
Sure, let us know what you'd like and we can easily create it. For instance if you want users primarily from a geographical area, or users from a certain demographic, we can do that. Facebook used to limit the number of friends that a person could have to 5,000, but that limitation no longer exists. There are now some people with considerably more friends than that, and these people often create trouble for applications that look at the user's friends. We can even create users who are friends with everyone (Santa??).
Can you simulate <some erroneous condition> that my app encountered when it called a Facebook API?
Absolutely. During the processing of your request, the Facebook servers may go down, require data that no longer exists, or run into a bug. All of these things will mean error codes passed back to your application, or maybe no response at all. In any event, you want your application to be as robust as possible, and react to these conditions in the best possible way (i.e. not crashing itself). FriendRunner will allow you to recreate any situation that you'd like to test with.
