Security News
Research
Data Theft Repackaged: A Case Study in Malicious Wrapper Packages on npm
The Socket Research Team breaks down a malicious wrapper package that uses obfuscation to harvest credentials and exfiltrate sensitive data.
playwright
Advanced tools
Playwright is a Node.js library developed by Microsoft that allows developers to automate browser actions for testing and scraping purposes. It supports multiple browsers, including Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, and provides a high-level API to control headless or full browsers over the DevTools Protocol.
Browser Automation
Automate browser actions such as opening a page, clicking elements, and navigating through websites.
const { chromium } = require('playwright');
(async () => {
const browser = await chromium.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
// other actions...
await browser.close();
})();
Web Scraping
Extract data from web pages by selecting elements and retrieving their content.
const { firefox } = require('playwright');
(async () => {
const browser = await firefox.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
const data = await page.textContent('.some-element');
console.log(data);
await browser.close();
})();
Automated Testing
Write automated tests for web applications, including assertions to validate the behavior of the application.
const { webkit } = require('playwright');
const { expect } = require('@playwright/test');
(async () => {
const browser = await webkit.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
const title = await page.title();
expect(title).toBe('Example Domain');
await browser.close();
})();
Cross-Browser Testing
Test web applications across multiple browsers to ensure compatibility and consistent behavior.
const { chromium, firefox, webkit } = require('playwright');
(async () => {
for (const browserType of [chromium, firefox, webkit]) {
const browser = await browserType.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
// Perform tests across different browsers
await browser.close();
}
})();
Mobile Emulation
Emulate mobile devices to test responsive designs and touch interactions.
const { chromium, devices } = require('playwright');
const iPhone11 = devices['iPhone 11 Pro'];
(async () => {
const browser = await chromium.launch();
const context = await browser.newContext({
...iPhone11
});
const page = await context.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
// Emulate mobile device actions and layout
await browser.close();
})();
Selenium WebDriver is one of the most well-known browser automation tools. It requires separate drivers for each browser and is generally slower than Playwright due to its reliance on the WebDriver protocol, which is more standardized but less performant.
Puppeteer is another Node.js library that provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. It is similar to Playwright but was developed by the Chrome DevTools team and initially focused on Chrome, whereas Playwright supports multiple browsers out of the box.
Cypress is a front-end testing tool built for the modern web. It is both a library for writing tests and a test runner that executes the tests. Cypress is known for its rich interactive test runner interface but does not support as many browsers as Playwright and is primarily focused on testing rather than general browser automation.
Nightwatch.js is an automated testing framework for web applications and websites, written in Node.js and using the W3C WebDriver API. It is designed to simplify the process of writing end-to-end tests. Nightwatch is less feature-rich compared to Playwright and is more focused on the testing aspect.
Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API. Playwright is built to enable cross-browser web automation that is ever-green, capable, reliable and fast.
Linux | macOS | Windows | |
---|---|---|---|
Chromium 132.0.6834.32 | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: |
WebKit 18.2 | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: |
Firefox 132.0 | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: | :white_check_mark: |
Headless execution is supported for all browsers on all platforms. Check out system requirements for details.
Looking for Playwright for Python, .NET, or Java?
Playwright has its own test runner for end-to-end tests, we call it Playwright Test.
The easiest way to get started with Playwright Test is to run the init command.
# Run from your project's root directory
npm init playwright@latest
# Or create a new project
npm init playwright@latest new-project
This will create a configuration file, optionally add examples, a GitHub Action workflow and a first test example.spec.ts. You can now jump directly to writing assertions section.
Add dependency and install browsers.
npm i -D @playwright/test
# install supported browsers
npx playwright install
You can optionally install only selected browsers, see install browsers for more details. Or you can install no browsers at all and use existing browser channels.
Auto-wait. Playwright waits for elements to be actionable prior to performing actions. It also has a rich set of introspection events. The combination of the two eliminates the need for artificial timeouts - a primary cause of flaky tests.
Web-first assertions. Playwright assertions are created specifically for the dynamic web. Checks are automatically retried until the necessary conditions are met.
Tracing. Configure test retry strategy, capture execution trace, videos and screenshots to eliminate flakes.
Browsers run web content belonging to different origins in different processes. Playwright is aligned with the architecture of the modern browsers and runs tests out-of-process. This makes Playwright free of the typical in-process test runner limitations.
Multiple everything. Test scenarios that span multiple tabs, multiple origins and multiple users. Create scenarios with different contexts for different users and run them against your server, all in one test.
Trusted events. Hover elements, interact with dynamic controls and produce trusted events. Playwright uses real browser input pipeline indistinguishable from the real user.
Test frames, pierce Shadow DOM. Playwright selectors pierce shadow DOM and allow entering frames seamlessly.
Browser contexts. Playwright creates a browser context for each test. Browser context is equivalent to a brand new browser profile. This delivers full test isolation with zero overhead. Creating a new browser context only takes a handful of milliseconds.
Log in once. Save the authentication state of the context and reuse it in all the tests. This bypasses repetitive log-in operations in each test, yet delivers full isolation of independent tests.
Codegen. Generate tests by recording your actions. Save them into any language.
Playwright inspector. Inspect page, generate selectors, step through the test execution, see click points and explore execution logs.
Trace Viewer. Capture all the information to investigate the test failure. Playwright trace contains test execution screencast, live DOM snapshots, action explorer, test source and many more.
Looking for Playwright for TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, .NET, or Java?
To learn how to run these Playwright Test examples, check out our getting started docs.
This code snippet navigates to Playwright homepage and saves a screenshot.
import { test } from '@playwright/test';
test('Page Screenshot', async ({ page }) => {
await page.goto('https://playwright.dev/');
await page.screenshot({ path: `example.png` });
});
This snippet emulates Mobile Safari on a device at given geolocation, navigates to maps.google.com, performs the action and takes a screenshot.
import { test, devices } from '@playwright/test';
test.use({
...devices['iPhone 13 Pro'],
locale: 'en-US',
geolocation: { longitude: 12.492507, latitude: 41.889938 },
permissions: ['geolocation'],
})
test('Mobile and geolocation', async ({ page }) => {
await page.goto('https://maps.google.com');
await page.getByText('Your location').click();
await page.waitForRequest(/.*preview\/pwa/);
await page.screenshot({ path: 'colosseum-iphone.png' });
});
This code snippet navigates to example.com, and executes a script in the page context.
import { test } from '@playwright/test';
test('Evaluate in browser context', async ({ page }) => {
await page.goto('https://www.example.com/');
const dimensions = await page.evaluate(() => {
return {
width: document.documentElement.clientWidth,
height: document.documentElement.clientHeight,
deviceScaleFactor: window.devicePixelRatio
}
});
console.log(dimensions);
});
This code snippet sets up request routing for a page to log all network requests.
import { test } from '@playwright/test';
test('Intercept network requests', async ({ page }) => {
// Log and continue all network requests
await page.route('**', route => {
console.log(route.request().url());
route.continue();
});
await page.goto('http://todomvc.com');
});
FAQs
A high-level API to automate web browsers
The npm package playwright receives a total of 9,007,894 weekly downloads. As such, playwright popularity was classified as popular.
We found that playwright demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 4 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Security News
Research
The Socket Research Team breaks down a malicious wrapper package that uses obfuscation to harvest credentials and exfiltrate sensitive data.
Research
Security News
Attackers used a malicious npm package typosquatting a popular ESLint plugin to steal sensitive data, execute commands, and exploit developer systems.
Security News
The Ultralytics' PyPI Package was compromised four times in one weekend through GitHub Actions cache poisoning and failure to rotate previously compromised API tokens.