Ledger API Test Tool¶

The Ledger API Test Tool is a command line tool for testing the correctness of implementations of the Ledger API, i.e. DAML ledgers. For example, it will show you if there are consistency or conformance problem with your implementation.

Its intended audience are developers of DAML ledgers, who are using the DAML Ledger Implementation Kit to develop a DAML ledger on top of their distributed-ledger or database of choice.

Use this tool to verify if your Ledger API endpoint conforms to the DA Ledger Model.

Downloading the tool¶

Download the Ledger API Test Tool from Maven and save it as ledger-api-test-tool.jar in your current directory.

Extracting `.dar` files required to run the tests¶

Before you can run the Ledger API test tool on your ledger, you need to load a specific set of DAML templates onto your ledger.

To obtain the corresponding .dar files, run:
```
$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar --extract
```
This writes all .dar files required for the tests into the current directory.
Load all .dar files into your Ledger.

Running the tool against a custom Ledger API endpoint¶

Run this command to test your Ledger API endpoint exposed at host <host> and at a port <port>:

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar <host>:<port>

For example

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar localhost:6865

If any test embedded in the tool fails, it will print out details of the failure for further debugging.

Exploring options the tool provides¶

Run the tool with --help flag to obtain the list of options the tool provides:

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar --help

Selecting tests to run¶

Running the tool without any argument runs only the default tests.

Those include all tests that are known to be safe to be run concurrently as part of a single run.

Tests that either change the global state of the ledger (e.g. configuration management) or are designed to stress the implementation need to be explicitly included using the available command line options.

Use the following command line flags to select which tests to run:

--list: print all available test suites to the console, shows if they are run by default
--list-all: print all available tests to the console, shows if they are run by default
--include: only run the tests that match the argument
--exclude: do not run the tests that match the argument
--perf-tests: list performance tests to run; cannot be combined with normal tests

Include and exclude are matched as prefixes, e.g. --exclude=SemanticTests will exclude all tests whose name starts with SemanticTests. Test names always start with their suite name followed by a colon, so the test suite names shown by --list can be useful for coarse-grained inclusion/exclusion.

Both --include and --exclude (and --perf-tests) can be specified multiple times and/or provide comma-separated lists, i.e. all of these are equivalent:

--include=a,b,c
--include=a --include=b --include=c
--include=a,b --include=c

The logic is always to first select included tests, then remove from that the excluded ones, i.e. include directives never override a corresponding exclude directive.

If no --include flag is given, all of the tests are included. You cannot run performance and non-performance tests in the same invocation. --exclude is ignored when running performance tests, and the program will stop if it detects that both --perf-tests and --include have been specified.

Examples (hitting a single participant at localhost:6865):

Only run TestA¶

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar --include TestA localhost:6865

Run all tests, but not TestB¶

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar --exclude TestB localhost:6865

Run all tests¶

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar localhost:6865

Run all tests, but not TestC¶

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar --exclude TestC

Performance tests¶

The available performance tests allow to establish the “performance envelope” of the ledger under test (a term borrowed from aeronautics), which offers an indication of the amount of the parameters under which a ledger implementation is supposed to perform.

Those tests include tail latency, throughput and maximum size of a single transaction. You can run the tool with the --list option to see a list of available test suites that includes individual performance envelope test cases. You can mix and match those tests to produce a test suite tailored to match the expected performance envelope of a given ledger implementation using a specific hardware setup.

For example, the following will verify that the ledger under test can have a tail latency of one second when processing twenty pings, perform twenty pings per seconds and being able to process a transaction one megabyte in size:

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar \
  --perf-tests=PerformanceEnvelope.Latency.1000ms \
  --perf-tests=PerformanceEnvelope.Throughput.TwentyOPS \
  --perf-tests=PerformanceEnvelope.TransactionSize.1000KB \
  localhost:6865

Note

A “ping” is a collective name for two templates used to evaluate the performance envelope. Each of the two templates, “Ping” and “Pong”, have a single choice allowing the controller to create an instance of the complementary template, directed to the original sender.

The test run will also produce a short summary of statistics which is printed to standard output by default but that can be written to a specific file path using the --perf-tests-report command line option.

Try out the Ledger API Test Tool against DAML Sandbox¶

If you wanted to test out the tool, you can run it against DAML Sandbox. To do this:

$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar --extract
$ daml sandbox *.dar
$ java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar localhost:6865

This should always succeed, as the Sandbox is tested to correctly implement the Ledger API. This is useful if you do not have yet a custom Ledger API endpoint.

Using the tool with a known-to-be-faulty Ledger API implementation¶

Use flag --must-fail if you expect one or more or the scenario tests to fail. If enabled, the tool will return the success exit code when at least one test fails, and it will return a failure exit code when all tests succeed:

java -jar ledger-api-test-tool.jar --must-fail localhost:6865

This is useful during development of a DAML ledger implementation, when tool needs to be used against a known-to-be-faulty implementation (e.g. in CI). It will still print information about failed tests.

Tuning the testing behaviour of the tool¶

Use the command line option --timeout-scale-factor to tune timeouts applied: by the tool.

Set --timeout-scale-factor to a floating point value higher than 1.0 to make the tool wait longer for expected events coming from the DAML ledger implementation under test. Conversely use values smaller than 1.0 to make it wait shorter.

Verbose output¶

Use the command line option --verbose to print full stack traces on failures.

Concurrent test runs¶

To minimize concurrent runs of tests, --concurrent-test-runs can be set to 1 or 2. The default value is the number of processors available.

Note that certain tests, known to be possibly interfering with others (e.g. configuration management), are always run sequentially and as the last tests in a run.

Retired tests¶

A few tests can be retired over time as they could be deemed not providing the necessary signal to a developer or operator that an integration correctly implements the DAML Ledger API. Those test will nominally be kept in the test suite for a time to prevent unwanted breakages of existing CI pipelines. They will however not be run and they will eventually be removed. You are advised to remove any explicit reference to those tests while they are in their deprecation period.

Retired tests are not listed when using --list or --list-all but can be included in a run using --include. In this case, nothing will be run and the test report will mention that the test has been retired and skipped.