Using PRTG Network Monitor's HTTP Transaction Sensors you can monitor a sequence of URLs on a webserver. This is useful, for example, to ensure that placing products into a shopping cart and then passing the checkout actually works

A word of caution

It is important to understand that for some web applications it can be quite complicated if not impossible to create a transaction sensor in PRTG Network Monitor.

PRTG7's Transaction Sensor requires your web application to use cookies for session management. If your web application uses hidden fields, URL parameters, POST fields, Javascript (or other methods that require interaction with a real browser) to store the session id(s) then you can not monitor it using PRTG7's Transaction Sensor.

Please understand that our support team can not take over the duty of creating and debugging the transaction sensor settings for you and your website. The sensor is already in use on many different websites and can be considered reliable.

What we need

The HTTP Transaction sensor simulates the HTTP requests that are sent to a server by a user visiting a sequence of webpages (while preserving the cookies during all requests).

For this simulation we must feed the URLs and their POSTDATA (for POST requests only) into PRTG7's HTTP Transaction sensor. Now figuring out the URLs is pretty simple, because we can simply copy the URLs from the URL edit field of our web browser. But getting a hand on the POSTDATA is not so easy.

Introducing Paessler URL Recorder

By using Paessler URL Recorder we can get the POSTDATAs with a few mouseclicks also. This programs helps to find out the URLs and the POSTDATA strings that a user sends to a web server while surfing a sequence of URLs.

Simply download, install and run the software. It works like a standard web browser where you can enter a URL at the top and click "Go". Then you can use the mouse etc. to surf through the sequence you want to record. While you are accessing one page after the other the URL and - if you submit a POST request - the POSTDATAs are stored in the list at the bottom of the windows.

When you are done you can use the URL lists's context menu to

• save the list of URLs to CSV and HTML
• copy the list to the clipboard
• copy individual URLs or POSTDATA to the clipboard.

Go to the Paessler URL Recorder Download

Transferring the Data into PRTG Network Monitor

The easiest way is to run URL Recorder across the page sequence you want to monitor. Now keep the window open, start a web browser and open PRTG7's web interface. Create a new HTTP Transaction sensor and copy the URLs (and for POST requests) the POSTDATA using the clipboard from the URL Recorder into the edit fields of PRTG Network Monitor. Check the other settings of the sensor and submit the page.

Now you should be able to monitor the sequence as desired.

IMPORTANT: Be aware that if the sequence you have recorded was a shopping cart or any other transactional activity PRTG7 will now cause the same purchase or transaction every few minutes if you do not take measurements against this!!!