Using Testcontainers has radically improved the process of working with test scenarios. Thanks to this tool, creating environments for integration tests has become simpler (see the article Isolation in Testing with Kafka). Now we can easily launch containers with different versions of databases, message brokers, and other services. For integration tests, Testcontainers has proven indispensable. Although load testing is less common than functional testing, it can be much more enjoyable. Studying graphs and analyzing the performance of a particular service can bring real pleasure. Such tasks are rare, but they are especially exciting for me.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate an approach to creating a setup for load testing in the same way that regular integration tests are written: in the form of Spock tests using Testcontainers in a Gradle project environment. Load-testing utilities such as Gatling, WRK, and Yandex.Tank are used.