Documentation Grafana Cloud Testing and synthetics Performance testing Author and run tests Use k6 extensions

Use k6 extensions

k6 has a set of core functionalities that you can use via its own set of JavaScript APIs. As a user, you might want to test a service or a protocol that’s not supported by the existing k6 APIs. That’s where extensions come in.

k6 extensions are a way to extend the core functionality of k6. For k6 open source users, they can write custom extensions and then build a new k6 binary to use them locally. For Grafana Cloud k6 users, you can use a set of built-in extensions when running your test scripts, without having to build a custom k6 binary.

Supported extensions in Grafana Cloud

Grafana Cloud k6 has built-in support for the following extensions:

Use extensions in Grafana Cloud

There are different requirements for using extensions in Grafana Cloud depending on how you execute your test script.

Before you begin

• Extensions are only supported when running your test scripts using the Script editor or the CLI.
• When running your tests via the CLI, you must use k6exec.
• Using extensions via the Test builder isn’t supported.

Import an extension in your test script

The first step to using a cloud extension is to import it into your test script. For example, if you want to use the xk6-faker extension, you can add the following import statement:

JavaScript Copy

import faker from 'k6/x/faker';

You can then use any functionality available from the extension. For example, you can create a random name using the faker.person class:

JavaScript Copy

import faker from 'k6/x/faker';

export default function () {
  console.log(faker.person.firstName());
}

Run a test with an extension in Grafana Cloud

To run a test script that uses an extension, you have to use the Script editor or the CLI.

Run a test via the script editor

The script editor supports built-in extensions by default. You can import and use any extensions, and run your test without any additional steps.

Run a test via the CLI

To run test scripts with extensions via the CLI, you have to install and use k6exec.

To set up k6exec:

1. Download and run the k6exec binary for your operating system.

   • Alternatively, if you have Go installed in your machine, run go install github.com/grafana/k6exec/cmd/k6exec@latest.

2. If you already have k6 installed on your machine, you can authenticate with k6 and k6exec will automatically use the same authentication settings. If not, you can authenticate with k6exec directly by running:

   bash Copy

   k6exec cloud login –token <API_TOKEN>

With k6exec configured in your machine, you can then run your test scripts using the k6exec cloud command. For example:

bash Copy

k6exec cloud run test.js