Playwright has become one of the most popular tools for end-to-end testing, and for good reason. In this guide, we'll walk through setting up Playwright and writing your first tests.

Why Playwright?

Playwright offers several advantages over other testing frameworks:

Cross-browser support: Test on Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with one API
Auto-waiting: Built-in waiting reduces flaky tests significantly
Powerful selectors: Role-based locators for resilient tests
Great debugging: Trace viewer and codegen tools

Setting Up Your Project

Getting started is straightforward. Create a new project and run:

npm init playwright@latest

This sets up your project with TypeScript support, example tests, and configuration files.

Writing Your First Test

Playwright tests are intuitive to write. Here's a simple example that tests a login flow:

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

test('user can log in', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/login');
  await page.getByLabel('Email').fill('user@example.com');
  await page.getByLabel('Password').fill('password');
  await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Sign In' }).click();
  await expect(page.getByText('Welcome back')).toBeVisible();
});

Best Practices

After implementing Playwright on dozens of projects, here are our recommendations:

Use role-based locators: They're more resilient than CSS selectors
Keep tests independent: Each test should be able to run in isolation
Use fixtures: Share setup logic across tests
Run tests in CI: Catch issues before they reach production

The best tests are the ones that give you confidence to deploy on Friday afternoon.

Stay tuned for more Playwright tips in upcoming posts!