Performance Testing: Introduction to k6 for Beginners

Course Curriculum

Chapter 1: Introduction & getting started with k6

Lecture 1: A brief introduction to k6

Lecture 2: How to use this course

Lecture 3: Installation & your first test with k6

Lecture 4: A word of caution

Lecture 5: Understanding basic performance testing concepts

Lecture 6: Specifying VUs and test duration

Lecture 7: Understanding test results & metrics

Chapter 2: Types of tests k6 can perform

Lecture 1: Section overview

Lecture 2: Performance testing

Lecture 3: What is scalability: Basic scaling concepts

Lecture 4: Smoke testing

Lecture 5: Smoke testing with k6

Lecture 6: Load testing

Lecture 7: Load testing with k6

Lecture 8: Stress testing

Lecture 9: Stress testing with k6

Lecture 10: Spike testing

Lecture 11: Spike testing with k6

Lecture 12: Breakpoint testing

Lecture 13: Soak testing

Lecture 14: Conclusion

Chapter 3: Creating test scripts with k6

Lecture 1: Making HTTP Requests with k6

Lecture 2: Writing assertions in k6

Lecture 3: Validating responses

Lecture 4: Setting thresholds

Lecture 5: Metric types and aggregation methods

Lecture 6: Defining a threshold for checks

Lecture 7: Custom metrics

Lecture 8: Custom metrics – A practical example

Lecture 9: Tags

Lecture 10: Custom tags

Lecture 11: Organizing requests in groups

Lecture 12: Defining thresholds for groups

Lecture 13: Understanding the group duration metric

Lecture 14: Revisiting the request duration metric

Lecture 15: The structure of a k6 test script

Lecture 16: Aborting the test execution

Chapter 4: Building HTTP requests for APIs

Lecture 1: Section Overview

Lecture 2: A quick introduction to APIs

Lecture 3: What is HTTP?

Lecture 4: Making a GET request

Lecture 5: JSON format explained

Lecture 6: Debugging HTTP requests and responses

Lecture 7: Parsing JSON

Lecture 8: Correlating requests

Lecture 9: Accessing response headers

Lecture 10: Making a POST request

Lecture 11: Assignment – Making a POST request

Lecture 12: Assignment – Making a POST request – Solution

Lecture 13: Code refactoring

Lecture 14: Token-based API Authentication

Lecture 15: Assignment – Create a new resource using POST

Lecture 16: Assignment – Create a new resource using POST – Solution

Lecture 17: Assignment – Retrieve a resource after creation

Lecture 18: Assignment – Retrieve a resource after creation – Solution

Lecture 19: HTTP 301 redirects

Lecture 20: Making a PUT request

Lecture 21: Making a PATCH request

Lecture 22: Making a DELETE request

Chapter 5: Using parameters in k6 scripts

Lecture 1: Using environment variables in scripts

Lecture 2: Random “think” time (sleep)

Lecture 3: Random string function

Lecture 4: Random item in an array function

Lecture 5: Using an external JSON file

Lecture 6: Using an external CSV file

Chapter 6: k6 Cloud – Running performance tests using the power of the cloud

Lecture 1: Section Overview

Lecture 2: Setting up an Grafana account

Lecture 3: Your first test execution in the k6 cloud

Lecture 4: Running k6 locally and exporting the results to the cloud

Lecture 5: Specifying a Grafana project

Lecture 6: Inspecting the text execution report in k6

Lecture 7: Understanding best practice warnings

Chapter 7: k6 CLI (command line usage)

Lecture 1: Section Overview

Lecture 2: Specifying VUs, duration & iterations

Lecture 3: Configure k6 to allow insecure requests

Lecture 4: Output in JSON format

Lecture 5: Exploring the official k6 documentation

Chapter 8: Integration with CI/CD Pipelines

Lecture 1: Section overview

Lecture 2: k6 CLI & Exit codes

Lecture 3: Integrating k6 with Jenkins – Installing k6

Lecture 4: Running k6 tests in Jenkins (freestyle, Jenkinsfile, Docker)

Lecture 5: Using k6 cloud with Jenkins

Lecture 6: Integrating k6 with GitLab CI