GitLab CI template for k6 loading test

This project implements a GitLab CI/CD template to run your automated load-testing with k6.

Usage

This template can be used both as a CI/CD component or using the legacy include:project syntax.

Use as a CI/CD component

Add the following to your .gitlab-ci.yml:

include:
  # 1: include the component
  - component: $CI_SERVER_FQDN/to-be-continuous/k6/gitlab-ci-k6@3.4.3
    # 2: set/override component inputs
    inputs:
      review-enabled: true # ⚠ this is only an example

Use as a CI/CD template (legacy)

Add the following to your .gitlab-ci.yml:

include:
  # 1: include the template
  - project: 'to-be-continuous/k6'
    ref: '3.4.3'
    file: '/templates/gitlab-ci-k6.yml'

variables:
  # 2: set/override template variables
  REVIEW_ENABLED: "true" # ⚠ this is only an example

depending on your needs and environment, you might have to use one of the template variants.

k6 job

This job starts k6 tests.

It uses the following variables:

Input / Variable	Description	Default value
image / K6_IMAGE	The Docker image used to run k6	registry.hub.docker.com/grafana/k6:latest
tests-dir / K6_TESTS_DIR	The k6 tests directory	k6
extra-args / K6_EXTRA_ARGS	k6 extra command-line	none
review-enabled / REVIEW_ENABLED	Set to true to enable k6 tests on review environments (dynamic environments instantiated on development branches)	none (disabled)

In addition to a textual report in the console, this job produces the following reports, kept for one day:

Report	Format	Usage
reports/k6-*.summary.json	k6 summary report(s)	GitLab integration
reports/k6-*.native.json	k6 JSON detailed stats	-

Load performance report integration

k6 test reports are integrated to GitLab by generating load performance reports.

This is done using the following CLI options: --out json=reports/

Base URL auto evaluation

By default, the k6 template tries to auto-evaluate the base URL (i.e. the variable pointing at server under test) by looking either for a $environment_url variable or for an environment_url.txt file.

Therefore if an upstream job in the pipeline deployed your code to a server and propagated the deployed server url, either through a dotenv variable $environment_url or through a basic environment_url.txt file, then the k6 test will automatically be run on this server.

all our deployment templates implement this design. Therefore even purely dynamic environments (such as review environments) will automatically be propagated to your k6 tests.

In order to use the auto-evaluated base URL, you shall use the base_url environment variable from your k6 scripts.

Example:

import http from 'k6/http';
import {check, sleep} from 'k6';

export default function() {
  const data = {username: 'username', password: 'password'};
  let res = http.post(__ENV.base_url, data);
    check(res, { 'success login': (r) => r.status === 200 });
    sleep(0.3);
}