K6 performance testing demo - Nimble test CoP - 20/02/25

Installation

1. Install the K6 CLI tool
2. Install node
3. Navigate to the project directory and run npm i to install dependencies

Useful commands

Local testing

• Running local tests - k6 run {script_name}
• Running with quiet output - k6 run {script_name} --quiet
• Running with standrd output to a JSON file - k6 run {script_name} --summary-export={file_name}.json
• Running with verbose output to a JSON file - k6 run {script_name} --out json={file_name}.json
• Setting options in the CLI (long form) - k6 run {script_name} --vus 2 --duration 11s --iterations 2
• Setting options in the CLI (short form) - k6 run {script_name} -u 2 -d 11s -i 2
• Ignore insecure certs - k6 run {script_name} --insecure-skip-tls-verify
• Run browser tests with headless set to false - K6_BROWSER_HEADLESS=false k6 run {script_name}

Cloud testing

• Logging into k6 cloud with UN & PW - k6 cloud login (promt for UN and PW will follow)
• Logging into k6 cloud with token - k6 cloud login --token {api_token}
• Setting a k6 cloud token in the CLI - K6_CLOUD_TOKEN=$TOKEN k6 cloud {script_name}
• Upload script to k6 cloud to run there - k6 cloud {script_name}
• Running script locally then uploading results to k6 cloud - k6 run {script_name} -o cloud or k6 cloud run --local-execution {script_name}

Useful links

• Smoke tests - https://grafana.com/blog/2024/01/30/smoke-testing/
• Stress tests - https://grafana.com/blog/2024/01/30/stress-testing/
• Load tests - https://grafana.com/blog/2024/01/30/average-load-testing/
• Spike tests - https://grafana.com/blog/2024/01/30/spike-testing/
• Breakpoint tests - https://grafana.com/blog/2024/01/30/breakpoint-testing/
• Soak tests - https://grafana.com/blog/2024/01/30/soak-testing/
• Geting an k6 cloud API token - https://{k6_username}.grafana.net/a/k6-app/settings/api-token
• Mock APIs - https://designer.mocky.io/
• K6 distributed tests - https://grafana.com/docs/k6/latest/testing-guides/running-distributed-tests/
• K6 usage collection - https://grafana.com/docs/k6/latest/set-up/usage-collection/