Playwright Architecture & Features Every Tester Must Know

Before writing advanced tests, it’s important to understand how Playwright works.

🔑 Playwright Architecture

1. Client API (Java) → Your test code.
2. Playwright Core → Communicates with browser engines.
3. Browser Contexts → Independent sessions (like incognito).
4. Pages → Tabs/windows where tests run.

This design enables parallelism and isolated testing sessions.

✨ Key Features of Playwright

1. Cross-Browser Support
   • Chromium (Chrome, Edge)
   • Firefox
   • WebKit (Safari)
2. Auto-Waiting
   Playwright waits automatically for elements to be ready before actions.
3. Selectors
   • CSS, XPath
   • Text selectors
   • Role-based locators → page.getByRole("button", new Page.GetByRoleOptions().setName("Login"));
4. Tracing & Debugging
   • Generate trace.zip → replay step-by-step test execution.
   • Screenshot & video recording support.
5. Network Interception
   • Mock API calls.
   • Validate requests/responses.
6. Headless & Headed Modes
   • Run in background for CI.
   • Or visualize in headed mode for debugging.

👉 These features make Playwright faster, more stable, and more powerful than Selenium in many cases.