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How xk6-dashboard works

The extension as a k6 output extension receives the metrics from the k6 runtime. It creates two types of aggregates from the metrics.

  1. cumulative: the metrics are aggregated from the beginning of the test run to the current time.
  2. snapshot: the metrics are aggregated for the interval specified in the period parameter.

Aggregated metrics are used to create SSE events called snapshot and cumulative. These events only contain the values of the metrics. A metric event is created from the other data of the metrics when the metric first appears.

When the test starts and stops, a start and stop event is generated.

A config and a param event are also generated before the start event. The config event contains the dashboard configuration, while the param event contains the output parameters received from the k6 runtime (e.g. thresholds, scenarios, period).

The user interface is a single page web application (SPA) embedded in the extension. The HTML report page is also embedded in the extension.

When the extension starts, it starts a web server that serves the user interface (/ui), the report page (/report) and SSE events (/events).

The events are kept in memory by the event emitter component, so that the client that connects later also receives all events. The memory requirement increases according to O(n) with the number of metrics (an aggregate is created per metric) and with time (aggregates are created every 10 seconds by default)

sequenceDiagram
  participant k6 as k6 runtime
  participant extension as extension
  participant server as web server
  participant client as browser
  k6->>extension: Start
  extension-->>server: start
  k6->>extension: AddMetricSamples()
  extension->>extension: buffering
  extension->>extension: flush
  extension-->>server: metric,snapshot,cumulative
  client->>server: GET /ui
  server->>client: SPA
  client->>server: GET /events
  server-->>client: config
  server-->>client: param
  server-->>client: start
  server-->>client: metric,snapshot,cumulative
  k6->>extension: AddMetricSamples()
  extension->>extension: buffering
  extension->>extension: flush
  extension-->>server: metric,snapshot,cumulative
  server-->>client: metric,snapshot,cumulative
  k6->>extension: Stop
  extension->>extension: flush
  extension-->>server: metric,snapshot,cumulative
  server-->>client: metric,snapshot,cumulative
  extension-->>server: stop
  server-->>client: stop
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Events

The /events endpoint (default: http://127.0.0.1:5665/events) is a standard SSE source endpoint. Using this event source you can create your own dashboard UI.

Events will be emitted periodically based on the period parameter (default: 10s). The event's data is a JSON object with metric names as property names and metric values as property values. The format is similar to the List Metrics response format from the k6 REST API.

Two kind of events will be emitted:

  • config contains ui configuration
  • param contains main extension parameters (period, scenarios, thresholds, etc)
  • start contains start timestamp
  • stop contains stop timestamp
  • metric contains new metric definitions
  • snapshot contains metric values from last period
  • cumulative contains cumulative metric values from the test starting point