What is Playwright Test Automation?

Every couple of years a new tool is made to compete in the automation world with Selenium. Today, we are looking at Playwright, which is a framework for Web Testing and Automation.

This article will talk about:

• What is Playwright
• Pros and Cons
• Should You Be Using It

What is Playwright

Playwright is very new and the first version was released in just 2020. It was built by Microsoft and is a Node.js library. Playwright enables end-to-end testing for modern web applications and supports all major browsers and different programming languages. By default Playwright launches headless browsers, meaning a User Interface will not be displayed. Because of this, you must use the command line. You can change your setting to run in a headed mode to show a browser.

Playwright is free and open source. That means you can go download it today and set it up to start using it right away. It comes with native integration out of the box. It has Docker images, which allow you to run tests in isolated environments. For each test, Playwright creates a browser context, which is equivalent to a new profile. This further helps with test isolation and is done very fast.