URL Exclusions

Last modified on March 27, 2024
Note: To use this guide, you need to know how to use AlertSite DéjàClick transaction recording tool. If you do not have the DéjàClick toolbar in your Firefox browser, go to the DéjàClick Downloads page to download the DéjàClick add-on and additional modules (TrueScreen and ImageMagick). If you have never used DéjàClick before, please go to the DéjàClick Quick Start Guide. After you have become comfortable with recording DéjàClick transactions, you will be able to move on to this more advanced feature.

Under certain conditions, you may want to exclude specific URLs from being processed by DéjàClick during monitoring. For example, you may not want the time it takes to load 3rd party objects such as advertising, embedded Flash, or images to be included in your performance measurements. Your DéjàClick properties can be configured with a list of URLs to be excluded from script processing. They will be loaded as part of the transaction, but ignored for measurement purposes.

To configure URL Exclusions in the DéjàClick Properties sidebar, you must switch to the AdvancedDisplay Level at the bottom of the Properties sidebar or set the Configuration Options Display Level to the Advanced mode. Once set to the Advanced display level, the URL Exclusions panel will be available. Click on the property to expand the panel.

URL Exclusion in the sidebar:

URL Exclusion

Open URL Exclusion panel:

URL Exclusion panel

Click Add to display the URL Exclusion dialog. Enter any part of the URL to be excluded into the URL field, for example:

Add URL Exclusion

Click OK to add it to the list. It will be displayed in the URL Exclusion property panel:

URL Exclusion listed

With this format, any URL containing flashobject.com will be excluded from performance metrics. For example, the following URLs, if they exist in the web page, would not be included in the measurements:

  • myflashobject.com/video
  • pictures/lotsofflashobject.com
  • real/flashobject.com

You may also use regular expressions for URL Exclusion.

Note: Use care when using regular expressions for URL Exclusion. You need to be familiar with regular expressions in JavaScript. Invalid or incorrect expressions could cause wrong exclusions or no exclusions at all. Click the (?) next to the Match Type radio button Regular Expression for extensive information on regular expression formats.

The Action Type selections, Ignore and Block, are described as follows:

  • Ignore: Request the URL but do not include performance timings.

  • Block: Block the request for the URL entirely.

If you select Block, a warning dialog will be displayed:

Blocking dialog

Click Cancel if you do not want to block playback if the URL is an integral part of your transaction .

The example below illustrates what the property panel looks like with three URLs added:

Three Exclusions

The first two listed are in plain text and any URLs with the string flashobject.com or 3rdpartyads.org/pictures are excluded from measurements.

The third entry, \b^http[s]?://.+[.](?!mydomain).*\.com, is a regular expression that means that any URL that does not start with http://www.mydomain.com (or https) is excluded. For example, the the response time for URL http://www.mydomain.com/flashobject.com/video/ would be included in the performance measurements, but http://www.abc.com would be excluded.

Highlight search results