We are thrilled to announce that documentation for Gander, the innovative performance testing framework, is now available. Designed as a collaboration between the Google Chrome team and Tag1 Consulting, Gander allows you to run efficient Drupal performance testing on your websites.

When milliseconds matter, performance – especially with the increase of mobile usage internationally – has a significant and direct impact on website success and, ultimately, business outcomes. Gander revolutionizes performance testing for Drupal websites because it is a proactive framework integrated within Drupal core.

Anyone can start using Gander. Curious to know more? Nathaniel Catchpole (aka. Catch), the architect and lead developer on the project, also renowned for his contributions to Drupal as a core maintainer, gave a live demo of Gander in a recent Tag1 Team Talk. It is a great place to start if you are interested in seeing it in action.

Gander Documentation on Drupal.org

Ready to test out Gander for yourself? We have released comprehensive documentation for Gander on Drupal.org. This documentation guides you through every aspect of this Drupal performance testing framework, from why it is important to how to set it up on your Drupal installation.

What’s included:

  • Introduction: An introduction to Gander, including why you should use it.
  • How it can be used: An explanation of the two ways of using Gander.
  • How to contribute: Gander is open source and it relies on a community of volunteers.
  • Quickstart: Detailed instructions on how to get Gander up and running.
  • Performance assertions: Performance requirements can be inserted into existing PHPUnit tests.
  • Monitoring performance metrics: Gander allows the monitoring of performance metrics across longer periods using visualization tools.

After setting up Gander in your local environment, you can write performance tests for your own projects and incorporate them into your in-house development processes.

View Gander Documentation on Drupal.org
Gander Documentation

Get Started With Gander’s Quickstart Guide

The best way to get started with Gander is to use the DDEV add-on. It will automatically add all necessary services to your local environment (such as Grafana, OpenTelemetry collector, Grafana Tempo,and Prometheus).

1. Prerequisites

To start using the DDEV add-on, ensure that all the prerequisites are met:

2. Working Local Environment

If you already have a working local environment that can run functional tests, skip to the next step. Otherwise, create a suitable local environment by following these steps:

composer create-project drupal/recommended-project gander_project
cd gander_project
composer require --dev drupal/core-dev
ddev config
ddev get ddev/ddev-selenium-standalone-chrome

3. Run Gander Tests

Now you can start running Gander tests:

ddev get tag1consulting/ddev-gander
ddev restart
ddev ssh
cd web/
  • To run a single test:
../vendor/bin/phpunit -c core --filter hot core/profiles/demo_umami/tests/src/FunctionalJavascript/OpenTelemetryNodePagePerformanceTest.php
  • To run all Gander tests:
../vendor/bin/phpunit -c core --group OpenTelemetry
  • Check the Grafana dashboard via: http://<project_name>.ddev.site:3000/
  • You might need to run the test a few times for the data to start appearing on the dashboard.

You can start using Gander today. Don’t wait for your site performance issues to grow into a large problem. The Gander framework, included in Drupal core since 10.2, gives organizations like yours the tools to start regularly monitoring the performance of your projects. The new documentation walks you through how to set up and use Gander for Drupal performance testing.

Optimize your Drupal site performance with Gander
Gander Documentation

Want to learn more? Join us at DrupalCon Portland!

We are hosting a deep dive into Gander at the upcoming DrupalCon in Portland. We will explain the motivation for and basics of Gander, have a live demo, and show how to use it for Drupal Core development and on your own site. We will also talk about the benefits, how we got here, where we go from here, and ask for your feedback.

Don’t miss out! Join us on Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 16:10 PDT in Room B117-119.

We will also present Gander as part of the Drupal Project Initiatives Keynote on Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 09:00 PDT in Room 201-203 or Ballroom.

Are you as excited as we are? Come to our deep dive at DrupalCon Portland, learn more about Gander, or reach out today!

Image by Ralph from Pixabay