Playwright

Playwright

Playwright is an open-source end-to-end testing and browser automation framework developed by Microsoft. It allows you to automate actions in web browsers like Chromium (Chrome, Edge), WebKit (Safari), and Firefox with a single API.

It’s commonly used for:

  • UI Testing – verifying that web applications work as expected.
  • Web Scraping – extracting data from websites.
  • Automation – filling forms, clicking buttons, downloading/uploading files, etc.

Playwright is similar to Selenium, but faster and more modern, supporting features like:

  • Auto-waiting for elements
  • Handling multiple browser contexts
  • Cross-browser support
  • Headless & headed mode

Example: Using Playwright with JavaScript/Node.js

First, install Playwright:

npm init -y
npm install playwright

Script: Open a webpage and take a screenshot

const { chromium } = require('playwright');

(async () => {
  // Launch browser
  const browser = await chromium.launch({ headless: true });
  const context = await browser.newContext();
  const page = await context.newPage();

  // Navigate to website
  await page.goto('https://example.com');

  // Take screenshot
  await page.screenshot({ path: 'example.png' });

  // Close browser
  await browser.close();
})();

✅ This will open https://example.com in a headless Chromium browser and save a screenshot as example.png.

Example: Playwright Test (with built-in test runner)

Playwright also provides a test runner (@playwright/test) for writing structured tests.

Install:

npm install -D @playwright/test

Test file example.spec.js:

import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test('homepage has Playwright in title', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('https://playwright.dev/');
  await expect(page).toHaveTitle(/Playwright/);
});

Run test:

npx playwright test

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