In the world of modern development, E2E (or integration) testing has become a key part of application quality assurance. Frameworks such as Selenium, Cypress and Playwright dominate the field, but what makes Playwright stand out and become the preferred choice for many development teams? In this article we will explore the features, comparisons, advantages and practical examples that make Playwright the most powerful E2E testing framework available today.

What is Playwright?

Playwright is an E2E testing framework developed by Microsoft, designed to test in multiple browsers with high reliability and speed. Its support includes Chromium (Chrome, Edge), WebKit (Safari) and Firefox, making it a truly cross-platform solution. In addition, it allows you to run tests simultaneously in different contexts, simulating real user scenarios in great detail.

Comparison: Playwright vs Cypress vs Selenium

As you can see, Playwright excels in multi-browser compatibility, flexibility and speed. These features position it as a robust tool against its competitors.

Benchmarks

Playwright leads in performance according to multiple benchmarks. Here is a summary of results based on available tests:

This data indicates that Playwright is approximately 22% faster than Cypress and 55% faster than Selenium in the tests performed.

It is important to note that these results may vary depending on the environment and complexity of the tests. However, in similar scenarios, Playwright has proven to be more efficient in terms of execution speed.

Installation and Configuration

The installation of Playwright is simple and can be done with a single command:

npm install playwright

Basic configuration (playwright.config.js)

const { devices } = require('@playwright/test');

module.exports = {
  testDir: './tests',
  timeout: 30000,
  use: {
    baseURL: 'https://example.com',
    trace: 'on-first-retry',
  },
  projects: [
    { name: 'Chromium', use: { ...devices['Desktop Chrome'] } },
    { name: 'Firefox', use: { ...devices['Desktop Firefox'] } },
    { name: 'WebKit', use: { ...devices['Desktop Safari'] } },
  ],
};

This file allows you to configure the basic options and browsers for testing.

Sample Test

Here is a simple test that verifies the title of a page:

const { test, expect } = require('@playwright/test');

test('Home page has the correct title', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  await expect(page).toHaveTitle('Home Page');
});

For more complex flows, such as multi-step forms, Playwright recommends the use of page objects to encapsulate logic and reuse code.

Outstanding Features

• Visual testsIdeal for validating design changes. Allows you to compare screenshots to detect differences.
• Integration with CI/CDCompatible with tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions and more.
• Detailed reportsHTML reports: Generates automatic HTML reports and advanced debugging options.

Example of a visual test:

test('Visual validation', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  expect(await page.screenshot()).toMatchSnapshot('page-start.png');
});

Conclusion

Playwright has established itself as the most versatile and powerful E2E framework. Its flexibility, multi-browser support and performance make it the ideal choice for teams looking to automate tests with high efficiency. If you haven't tried it yet, now is the perfect time to do so!

Want more articles on development? We leave you here last week's post on software design patterns.

Do you already use Playwright in your projects?