5 Key Features that Make Playwright a Powerful Automation Tool

Application testing is one of the most important processes that has gained a lot of popularity in recent times. This is because modern apps have revolutionized into such a form that allows them to access multiple elements and different sets of data at the same time. For such a complex framework, the individual components of an application should not only work perfectly but should also be stable when all of them are combined. Modern application testing processes have also incorporated various advanced practices like automation testing to cope up with the demands of the modern application development lifecycle. Playwright is one of the most recently added automation testing frameworks in this list. This framework is often regarded as one of the best solutions for automation testing.

With this article, we are going to look at some of the basic features of Playwright. We’ll also analyze the role of these features in making Playwright one of the most modern powerful automation testing tools currently available. Finally, we will discuss the role of various platforms and tools in improving the efficiency of Playwright-based automation testing.

Analyzing the Base of Automation Testing

Automation testing is the process of automating the application test cases and removing human involvement in the test case execution process. To implement all of these changes, the system will use a text file consisting of all the required parameters, data sets, and other information that allow it to seamlessly communicate and interact with the application undergoing the development process. After the interaction, the system will generate a detailed test report describing the usability, stability, and user interactivity of the app. Finally, the developers and testers can go through this report to understand whether the application fits according to the standards of the modern application development market. The app developers can also implement significant changes in the test file to make the reports customized according to their requirements.

Automation test files are also reusable to a huge extent. Experts believe that automation testers can reimplement almost 65% of the existing test data. Moreover, it is also very easy to store and maintain these text files. However, test automation comes with an initial investment that might be steep for various small companies or individual developers. These investments cover the expenses for integrating various datasets, libraries, and plugins for the proper implementation and functioning of test automation. So, the app companies must have enough revenue resources to justify this investment and transition.

Elaborating the Concept of Playwright

The playwright is a node.JS library that is developed and maintained by Microsoft. With the help of this tool, the developers can automate the app testing processes on multiple popular browsers like Chromium, Firefox, and many others. Playwright also provides dedicated automation drivers for all of these browsers. The playwright is often regarded as one of the most popular choices to initiate and execute end-to-end testing on web applications. End-to-end testing is a process of ensuring that not only the new features are performing properly but also, they do not break the proper performance of the existing features present in an application. Since Playwright is maintained by Microsoft, the developers do not have to worry about any support or stability issues.

Using Playwright, the developers can also launch headless browsers. While using headless browsers for automation testing, the developers must remember that the command line is the only way of communicating with these browsers as headless browsers do not have any user interface by default. With the help of Playwright, the developers can also perform complete headless testing while using Microsoft Edge.

Key Features that Make Playwright a Powerful Automation Testing Tool

Playwright has various features that contribute massively towards improving the simplicity and usability of this automation testing tool. So, we have created a list containing the top features that all the developers must be aware of. They are as follows:

Playwright provides multi-browser support. This means that the developers can use the test cases across popular alternatives like Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox. The developers do not have to waste excessive time writing dedicated test cases for all the popular web browsers that are currently available. This process not only saves a lot of time in the application development process but also increases the efficiency of the development test bench. Using this process, the application developers can also ensure stable compatibility of the apps across all the alternatives.
Developers need to understand that Playwright is a cross-platform tool. This means that the developers can use this automation testing tool across multiple popular operating systems like Windows, Mac, and Linux. This further means that the application developers can use this automation testing tool across diverse development and testing environments. Using the cross-platform feature, the developers can also write the automation test cases on one platform and run them on other platforms without having to implement any significant changes in the test code. This is another feature that helps to save a lot of time in the application development lifecycle.
Playwright is one of the popular alternatives that helps application developers to enhance the speed and reliability of the web interaction automation testing process. For the implementation of this process, this tool will use the native automation capabilities of a browser along with the DevTools protocol to optimize the test cases. These Practices also help the application developers to reduce the flakiness of the test cases and improve the dependability of the test results. It is a very important feature when the developers are working with complex applications that consist of thousands of different elements that need to be verified.
The APIs present in Playwright help the application developers to interact with all the elements of the web application at the very basic level. This is one of the most critical parameters that help to automate all the aspects of the application development process. With this process, the application developers and testers can ensure the stability of the app irrespective of the use case scenarios or the technical knowledge of the end users. With this form of interaction, the app developers can also guarantee the stability of the app despite various physical parameters like broken display, user interaction error, or variable bandwidth.
Finally, the application developers need to utilize the integrated cross-browser support that comes with the Playwright test cases. Cross-browser testing is very important to improve a company’s testing capabilities and prospective audience reach. This is because it is impossible to alienate any segment of the end user based on browser incompatibilities. We will understand more about the role of cross-browser testing in the modern application development market in the later part of this article. With the help of Playwright, the developers can also identify and address browser-specific issues that might arise in the application. This is a very important feature that helps the application developers to ensure the uniform performance of the application across various offerings.

So, we can summarize that the multi-browser support and cross-platform support along with the powerful and efficient API of Playwright make it one of the best popular options that are currently available in the market for automation testing. However, the application developers must have a clear understanding of their prospective user base and their requirements. It will help them to design the test cases in such a format that it can cater to the needs of the current market.

Integration of Platforms and Tools with Playwright

As we already mentioned earlier, Playwright is relatively new to the market of automation testing. So, a lot is unknown about its multiple features and use cases. However, there are various platforms and tools easily available in the market that helps application developers quickly adapt to Playwright-based automation testing. With these tools, the developers can also introduce additional features to improve the efficiency of the automation testing process. A great example is the context of cloud platforms that eliminate the contemporary device test labs in a company. With these test labs, the developers usually verify the efficiency of a web application based on various physical parameters. However, cloud platforms help accomplish similar testing goals while running and completing all the test cases on remote servers.

Remote servers provide access to hundreds of real devices present on the cloud. This also grants access to various legacy devices that are impossible to find in the present market. These servers also eliminate the location barriers in the application test bench. To further improve our knowledge about the influence of cloud testing in the modern app industry, we can consider the example of LambdaTest as our benchmark discussion point:

From the basic knowledge of LambdaTest, we can see that it is a modern automated cross-browser testing platform that performs all the test cases over cloud-based remote servers. According to the standards of the current app market, cross browsers testing is the best way of ensuring the stability of the app irrespective of the user’s change in the operating system from a device version or browser version. This platform also has various efficient features like parallel test execution to improve the testing speeds by multiple times. Other than working with automation test scripts from Playwright, LambdaTest can also import the test cases from other popular alternatives like Selenium and Cypress. It is possible to run the Playwright-based test cases on more than 50 different popular browsers at the same time.

This platform will also help the application developers to efficiently verify the proper functioning of web pages that have local host servers. Companies usually use these pages for their internal operations and data maintenance processes. Finally, LambdaTest is a highly accurate platform as it integrates various test reports from real devices and other emulation softwares.

The Conclusion

With this article, we analyzed some of the best features that help make Playwright one of the most powerful automation testing tools that are currently available. As developers and testers, we can unanimously agree that the app market is truly moving towards a stage where it will be completely dominated by automation testing practices. So, it is very important for the app developers to not only accept this transition but also continue updating their knowledge regarding all the recent trends and innovations in this segment. The app companies can also help to simplify the adaptation by conducting several campaigns to spread the required knowledge regarding healthy automation testing practices. Lastly, it is very important to choose the correct tools that can complement the requirements of the app development project and the preferences of the developers.