Load testing microservices with Gatling

Gatling is an open source load testing tool that allows users to script custom scenarios using a Scala-based DSL. Scenarios can go beyond simple straight path testing and involve multiple steps, even simulating user behavior, such as pauses and making decisions about how to proceed based on output in the test. Gatling can be used to automate the load testing of microservices or even browser-based web applications.

In the previous recipe, we used Vegeta to send a constant request rate to our message-service. Our request path created a new message and then retrieved all messages for a user. This method had the advantage of being able to test the response time of retrieving all messages for a user as the list of messages grew. Vegeta excels at this type of testing, but because it is fed attack targets from a static file, you cannot use Vegeta to build dynamic request paths based on the responses from previous requests.

Because Gatling uses a DSL to script...