K6 Boilerplate

This is a boilerplate for K6 performance testing using Typescript and a "node-like" environment. This is heavily based off of Grafana's K6 Typescript Template.

• K6 Boilerplate
  • Advantages
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
    • Install dependencies
  • Folder Structure
  • Running the Tests
    • Build and Run Tests at Same The Time
  • Writing Tests
  • Helper Functions
    • K6 HTTP Wrapper Helper
  • Pre-Commit Tasks
  • Transpiling and Bundling

Advantages

• Linting and Prettier support
• Typescript support
• Simple setup for building and running all tests at once
• DotEnv file support
• K6 HTTP wrapped inside helper function for easy cross-project changes

Prerequisites

• K6
• NodeJS (Version 18.16.1)
• Yarn

Installation

Install dependencies

Clone the generated repository on your local machine, move to the project root folder and install the dependencies defined in package.json

$ yarn install

Folder Structure

.
├── dist                          # Temp location of compiled tests
├── src 
│   ├── helpers                   # Store helpers here
│   ├── types                     # Store types here, usually API types 
└   └── Example.test.ts           # Example tests, tests belong in the root of src

Running the Tests

To run a test written in TypeScript, we first have to transpile the TypeScript code into JavaScript and bundle the project

$ yarn build

This command creates the final test files to the ./dist folder.

Once that is done, we can run our script the same way we usually do, for instance:

$ yarn test ./dist/test-file-name.js

Or we can run all the test files at once using a bash script.

$ yarn test:all

Build and Run Tests at Same The Time

To support fast development we created the following command that allows you to build and run the tests at the same time.

$ yarn buildAndTest  ./dist/test-file-name.js

Or we can run all the test files at once using a bash script.

$ yarn buildAndTest:all

Writing Tests

• The test code is located in src folder
• The entry points for the tests file names need to end with .test.ts to distinguish them from auxiliary files, as configured in webpack.config.js.
• The ./src/data folder is used to store data files.
• Note you can import json files directly by using import someName from './data/someJsonFile.json'.
• Other, non .json and .ts data files, such as images or documents, will be copied over to the destination folder along with the compiled files.

Helper Functions

All helper functions should live under the ./src/helpers folder.

K6 HTTP Wrapper Helper

The Http.ts helper is a wrapper for K6 HTTP. The reasoning behind this is to provide a way to easily apply "project wide" options easily, such as redirects, timeout, or the baseUrl/API that is being tested. These helper functions should be used instead of using K6 HTTP directly.

Pre-Commit Tasks

• Before you commit and changes you will run yarn lint and address any errors. You can also run yarn lint:fix to try to automatically fix any errors.

Transpiling and Bundling

By default, k6 can only run ES5.1 JavaScript code. To use TypeScript, we have to set up a bundler that converts TypeScript to JavaScript code.

This project uses Babel and Webpack to bundle the different files - using the configuration of the webpack.config.js file.

If you want to learn more, check out Bundling node modules in k6.