Streamlining Test Configuration with Playwright
The playwright.config.ts file is a TypeScript file that configures the Playwright test runner. It allows you to specify the browsers to test, the test files to run, and the environment variables to set. This file is located in the root directory of your project, and it's recommended to create it early in the development process to streamline test configuration.
In the past, test automation relied on files such as testng.xml or cucumber.json to configure the test runner and specify which tests to run. However, the playwright.config.ts file provides a more modern approach to configuring test automation.
A project is a collection of tests that share the same configuration. They can be configured in the playwright.config.ts file and used to test on different browsers and devices. Projects are helpful for running tests with different timeouts or retries, or against various environments like staging and test. They can also be used to group tests by functionality.
import { defineConfig, devices } from '@playwright/test';
export default defineConfig({
timeout: 60000,
projects: [
{
name: 'setup',
testMatch: /global.setup\\.ts/,
teardown: 'teardown',
},
{
name: 'teardown',
testMatch: /global.teardown\\.ts/,
},
{
name: 'Google Chrome',
use: {
baseURL: '<https://owasp.org/>',
...devices['Desktop Chrome'],
channel: 'chrome'
},
testMatch: /.*smoke.spec.ts/,
testIgnore: '**/test-assets/**',
dependencies: ['setup'],
teardown: 'teardown',
retries: 0,
}
});The defineConfig function is used to create a new Playwright test configuration. The devices module provides a list of all available browsers and devices that can be used with Playwright.
The playwright runs test files based on the testMatch criteria. By default, Playwright searches for JavaScript or TypeScript files with suffixes of ".test" or ".spec". Files that match testIgnore patterns are not executed as tests. In both cases, the matching is based on the file's absolute path.
Dependencies are a list of necessary projects that must run before tests in another project run. They help configure global setup actions so that one project can depend on another project running first. Teardown is a project that cleans up resources acquired by dependent projects after they have finished.
My recent publication compiled a comprehensive collection of 100 similar typescript programs. Each program not only elucidates essential Typescript concepts and expounds upon the significance of test automation but also provides practical guidance on its implementation using Playwright. This resource will undoubtedly be valuable if you look deeper into similar topics.
