Getting started with K6 load testing

To learn K6 load test tooling an IDE is needed, a project and exercises. During the exercises you will discover how K6 works and how you can use it to put an application under load. The whole goal of load testing is to analyse the behavior of an application under load.

To get started K6 needs to be installed on your computer, an IDE is needed to write K6 load tests and in the IDE an extension can be installed that makes it easier to create the load test scripts. Follow the steps below to get started

The getting started consists of the following steps:

• Install K6, see
  • https://k6.io/docs/get-started/installation/
• Install an IDE of your preference, see
  • https://grafana.com/docs/k6/latest/misc/integrations/
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE): In the context of software development, IDE stands for "Integrated Development Environment". This is a software tool that developers use to write, test, and debug software applications.
  • Choose a development tool that suits you, for the examples there is no special requirements. I'm using MacOS with IntelliJ IDEA.
• Install the K6 IDE extenstion for the choosen IDE
  • https://grafana.com/docs/k6/latest/misc/integrations/
• Watch the introduction on K6, see
  • https://www.youtube.com/embed/y5tteMKZUqk and
  • view the K6 documentation https://k6.io/docs/
• Freshen up your Javascript programming skills, see
  • https://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp
  • https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/tag/javascript/
  • https://javascript.info
• Freshen up your CLI skills, see
  • https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-the-cli-beginner-guide/
  • https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/command-line-for-beginners/
• Create your first K6 script, see
  • https://k6.io/docs/get-started/running-k6/
  • Start met commando in de CLI: k6 new
  • continue and follow all the steps in the get-started
• Install Git
• https://github.com/git-guides/install-git

Everything is now ready to get started. The idea is that you create a new project in your IDE, follow the exercises from the grafana/k6-learn (https://github.com/grafana/k6-learn) and if you get stuck or need inspiration that you look at my worked out examples in https://github.com/Christian-Marc/Get-started-with-K6. So during the getting started you are constant switching between your own project and this project.

• Create your first K6 project, see
  • Cloning a Github project: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/cloning-a-repository
  • Cloning a template project (vanilla plain project): https://github.com/tom-miseur/k6-templates
  • Cloning a second project (project of the Readme file): https://github.com/Christian-Marc/Get-started-with-K6
    • example solutions to the K6-learn exercises
  • Perform K6-learn assignments, see https://github.com/grafana/k6-learn
    • A-foundation
    • B-intermediate (if A part goes smoothly)
    • C-future-ideas (if B part goes smoothly)
  • Create a readme.md file to collect learning points, see
    • Markdown voor Readme file: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/getting-started-with-writing-and-formatting-on-github/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax