While we intend to keep this module as simple and stable as possible, we may need to add features or introduce breaking changes. This could happen at any time until we release this module as stable.Experimental module, use at your own risk
Feel free to provide user feedback, and open an issue or pull request if you have any suggestions.
The Browser module brings browser automation and end-to-end web testing to k6 while supporting core k6 features. It adds browser-level APIs to interact with browsers and collect frontend performance metrics as part of your k6 tests.
This module aims to provide rough compatibility with the Playwright API, so you don’t need to learn a completely new API.
noteTo work with the browser module, make sure you are using k6 version 0.43.0 or above.
Use case for browser testing
The main use case for the browser module is to test performance on the browser level. Browser-level testing provides a way to measure user experience and find issues that are difficult to catch on the protocol level. Browser-level testing can help you answer questions like:
- When my application is receiving thousands of simultaneous requests from the protocol-level, what happens to the frontend?
- How can I get metrics specific to browsers, like total page load time?
- Are all my elements interactive on the frontend?
- Are there any loading spinners that take a long time to disappear?
A simple browser test
The preceding code launches a Chromium-based browser, visits the application and mimics a user logging in to the application. Once submitted, it checks if the text of the header matches what is expected.
noteWe're currently (February 2023) migrating most browser module APIs to be async and return a Promise. To make this simpler, our goal is to use the async/await keywords. For more information, check out Running browser tests.
After running the test, the following browser metrics will be reported.
This gives you a representation of browser performance as well as the usual HTTP specific metrics that k6 already tracks which lets you have a full picture on how your application behaves from a frontend and backend perspective, all in a single script.