This article was written in 2023. Versions, tools and recommendations may have changed since then. Newer posts are collected under Blog.
Performance testing is a crucial step in ensuring that your website can handle high levels of traffic and provide a smooth user experience. One tool that can help you perform performance tests on your website is k6. In this blog post, we’ll go over how to use k6 to test the performance of your website.
Install
You can install k6 very easily with npm or use the manual installer on https://k6.io/
npm install -g k6Run
Once k6 is installed, you can use it to run performance tests on your website. One of the simplest ways to do this is to create a script that defines the test scenario and then run the script using k6.
1import { check } from 'k6';
2
3import http from 'k6/http';
4export default function () {
5 let res = http.get(`https://google.com`);
6 check(res, {
7 'is status 200': (r) => r.status === 200,
8 });
9}This script uses k6’s built-in http module to make a GET request to the specified URL (in this case, https://google.com). It also uses the check function to check that the response has a status of 200, indicating that the request was successful.
To run the script save it as test.js, you can use the following command:
k6 run test.js --vus 20 --duration 30sThe result will be like
1 checks.....................: 100.00% ✓ 2936 ✗ 0
2 data_received..............: 70 MB 2.3 MB/s
3 data_sent..................: 429 kB 14 kB/s
4 http_req_blocked...........: avg=839.05µs min=100ns med=200ns max=130.71ms p(90)=300ns p(95)=300ns
5 http_req_connecting........: avg=298.5µs min=0s med=0s max=58.12ms p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
6 http_req_duration..........: avg=204.06ms min=111.92ms med=192.73ms max=794.46ms p(90)=238.85ms p(95)=267.37ms
7 http_req_receiving.........: avg=2.74ms min=42.6µs med=2.56ms max=16.55ms p(90)=4.47ms p(95)=5.9ms
8 http_req_sending...........: avg=26.04µs min=11.7µs med=25µs max=151.4µs p(90)=28.9µs p(95)=31.92µs
9 http_req_tls_handshaking...: avg=368.08µs min=0s med=0s max=72.96ms p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
10 http_req_waiting...........: avg=201.29ms min=111.85ms med=189.9ms max=791.47ms p(90)=235.46ms p(95)=264.09ms
11 http_reqs..................: 2936 97.212535/s
12 iteration_duration.........: avg=205.01ms min=112.02ms med=192.84ms max=794.55ms p(90)=239.62ms p(95)=269.16ms
13 iterations.................: 2936 97.212535/s
14 vus........................: 20 min=20 max=20
15 vus_max....................: 20 min=20 max=20This is just a simple example of how to use k6 to performance test a website. Keep in mind that you can also use k6 to test other types of web services and can combine multiple APIs to test application performance as well. Additionally, k6 allows to test with different scenarios such as load testing, spike testing and soak testing.
In summary, k6 is a powerful and flexible tool for performance testing your website. With just a little bit of setup, you can use k6 to quickly and easily test the performance of your website and ensure that it can handle high levels of traffic.
BEN ABT
Ben is Chief Engineering Officer and Principal Software Engineer at Medialesson.de, with a strong focus on .NET and Microsoft Azure. In his professional role, he designs and builds highly scalable platforms for hybrid and cloud-based scenarios. He also advises companies and C-levels on migrating to the sovereign cloud.
He runs myCSharp.de, the largest and most active German-speaking C# community forum, actively contributes to both his own and external open-source projects and regularly shares his knowledge through his blog, at community events, conferences and as a writer for technical magazines.
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