Using Playwright Test

Checkly natively supports running browser checks using Playwright Test Runner, allowing you to write tests and use assertions using the popular testing framework. Read more on how to utilise Playwright Test best in the official documentation.

Playwright Test Runner elevates your monitoring and debugging experience by providing a number of neat functionalities:

  • detailed trace files with step-by-step information on your test cases
  • video recordings of browser sessions
  • the expect() function comes with built-in awaiting
  • lots of web-first assertions like toContainText, toHaveURL
  • high-level locators like getByTitle, getByRole
  • independent nested test cases that make your Checkly check even more powerful

Playwright Test is available from runtime 2022.02 onwards.

A check using Playwright Test Runner will currently run around 30-50% longer than a regular Playwright check. This is caused by the additional assets of traces and videos. We are aware of this and are investigating solutions. If this is significantly degrading the performance of your check, we recommend to divide longer tests into multiple checks.

Features

This is the list of Playwright Test Runner features that are currently supported. We will update it as more features become supported.

Feature Supported?
Trace files Yes
Video recordings Yes
API testing Yes
Custom fixtures Yes
Reporters Only JSON, more to come
Typescript Yes
Not compatible with code sync via GitHub yet.
Global configuration No
Visual comparisons No (Current feature request)
Test retry No
Parallelism and sharding No

Browser check with multiple test cases

One of the key benefits of using Playwright Test is that you can split your check into multiple independent test cases, and group them using the test.describe function.

Your Checkly check will fail if at least one of the test cases fails.

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

test.describe('two tests', () => {
 test('one', async ({ page }) => {
   // ...
 })

 test('two', async ({ page }) => {
   // ...
 })
})
const { test } = require('@playwright/test')

test.describe('two tests', () => {
 test('one', async ({ page }) => {
   // ...
 })

 test('two', async ({ page }) => {
   // ...
 })
})

Hooks

Playwright Test Runner offers hook functions such as test.afterEach and test.beforeEach that run before or after individual test cases or test.afterAll and test.beforeAll that run before or after all tests have started/finished.

You can find more information on available methods in the official documentation.

Viewing trace files

When a @playwright/test test case fails, Checkly will record and make its trace files available via the UI. You can download the trace files for manual inspection or view them directly with trace.playwright.dev.

Using the Playwright Trace Viewer you can effortlessly view your test, skip back and forth between actions, view snapshots and metadata, and more. This makes it very easy to inspect individual traces and debug failing tests.

Note: When running tests from the editor page, trace files are always available for download and preview, regardless of whether the check is passing or failing. For scheduled check runs traces are only preserved when the check failed.

Video recordings

When a @playwright/test test case fails, Checkly will record a video for each page navigation and make it available in the UI. It is a great tool to get a first look of the actions and their outcome to quickly identify what failed, and to visualize regressions.

Here’s an example of a Playwright Test script that fails, and provides a video of the test sequence.

Note: When running tests from the editor page, video files are always available for download and preview, regardless of whether the check is passing or failing. For scheduled check runs videos are only preserved when the check failed.


You can contribute to this documentation by editing this page on Github