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 k6 v1.0.0 or greater.
• 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 use a special feature flag determined by the environment variable K6_BINARY_PROVISIONING=true (The feature is still considered experimental).

1. First, you can authenticate with k6 as usual:

   bash Copy

   k6 cloud login --token <API_TOKEN>

2. Then, you can run the test with the aforementioned feature flag:

   bash Copy

   K6_BINARY_PROVISIONING=true k6 cloud run test.js