Playwright framework and its benefits

Table of contents

Reading Time: 3 minutes

What is the Playwright framework:

Built by the Microsoft team, It is a framework for end-to-end testing and automation, slowly gaining popularity. Moreover,It is an open-source test automation library and It’s easy to set up, feature-packed, and one of the fastest, most reliable frameworks.

Not only is it versatile and easy to work with, but it has lightning-fast execution speeds and some great features that are unique to the Playwright framework, such as Trace Viewer and Test Generator.

Trace Viewer:

Trace Viewer is a GUI tool that can review Playwright traces after executing the test.

Test Generator:

Test Generator is a browser tool that Playwright provides, which records the actions performed in the browser and generates the equivalent code. This is useful if you want to quickly draft some tests or upskill members of your team who are not so familiar with writing code.

Why use the Playwright framework?

It’s an open-source framework relatively new to the market but is building up popularity fast. Microsoft maintains it and, as a result, receives regular updates and improvements. If we look at the number of downloads for similar frameworks which have been on the market for a while, we can see It has burst onto the scene.

Benefits of Playwright Framework:

Easy Setup and Configuration: Being a Test automation Framework it just needs a configuration as the installation doesn’t take much time. Depending on the language we use with Playwright, the installation steps might change.
Multi-Browser Support: Support for cross-browser platforms built on Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox – which includes Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.
Multi-Language Support: It supports Java, C#, Python, Javascript/ Typescript making it a popular choice. Most of the modern open-source test automation frameworks miss this feature.
Types of Testing: It supports Functional, End to End, and API Testing. With a third-party plugin, Playwright can be integrated with Accessibility testing.
Built-in Reporters: It framework, by default, comes with a lot of valuable reporters like List, Dot, Line, JSON, JUnit, and HTML Reporters. The exciting part is that with Playwright, one can create custom reporters. It also supports third-party reporter Allure Report.
Support for Multiple Tab/Browser Window: It supports multi-tab and multi-window. Some test cases need to verify the scenario by launching a new window and returning to the parent window. It supports all different types of test cases.
CI/CD Integration Support: It supports CI/CD integration. It even provides docker images for some language bindings.
Parallel Browser Testing: It also supports the execution of simultaneous tests through the Browser context and can run parallel tests with multiple browsers. This scales up testing and comes in handy when multiple web pages have to be tested simultaneously.

Architecture: Playwright framework

This framework communicates all requests through a single WebSocket connection, which stays in place until test execution is completed. This reduces the points of failure and allows commands to be sent quickly on a single connection.