We can easily say that it is almost impossible to develop modern applications without the integration of automation testing. This is because it is near impossible for a human developer to manually check the proper functioning of the thousands of elements that are present in modern applications. Moreover, it would take several months for manual testers to complete these processes. Considering the competitive nature of the application development market, this huge time gap can massively destroy the reputation of an app developing company. Playwright is an automation testing tool that helps developers to check the proper functioning of modern applications. This tool is relatively new compared to certain competitors like Selenium which is present in this market for almost a decade.
In this article, we are going to discuss everything that you need to know about Playwright testing. We will also discuss some of the points to justify the importance of these test cases. Finally, we will understand the role of different tools and platforms to improve the efficiency of Playwright test cases.
The basics of Playwright
We can define Playwright as a cross-browser framework that helps developers to initiate end-to-end test cases on modern web applications. This framework uses the same API to run frequent test cases. The goal of this testing process is to ensure that the application is functioning as expected by the company. End-to-end testing helps the developers to ensure that not only the individual component of the application is working properly but also, they are functioning smoothly when combined. This testing process also helps to check whether any change in the framework of the application breaks the performance of other elements. Playwright helps to simulate real-world environments to check the performance of the application from a user’s point of view.
Although Playwright is a younger platform compared to all the other market competitors, it has gained a lot of popularity due to its innovative updates and several revisions. Many developers have already started to shift their testing practices to this new test automation framework. One of the major drawbacks of Playwright is that it cannot initiate test cases on mobile applications or mobile browsers. In simple terms, developers can’t verify the functioning of mobile applications with this framework.
Understanding the Balance of Automation Testing
Considering the superiority of automation testing, many developers might consider that it has the potential to completely replace manual test cases. However, to be simple, certain testing processes are just impossible to conduct with a machine. Let us consider the example of two of these test cases to justify our claim:
- Exploratory testing is an important testing process that verifies whether all the components of an application are working properly when combined. Using this testing process, the developers find certain errors in the application that are usually overlooked by automated test cases. Therefore, it is very important to have an experienced human tester to conduct these testing processes.
- Visual testing is the process of verifying the proper placement of all the UI elements present in an application. The UI elements can consist of multiple items such as pictures videos and GIFs. The placement of these elements is critical for maintaining the user satisfaction level. The developers must ensure that these elements are present in the correct position irrespective of changing screen size and display resolution. So, it is not possible to conduct these test cases without the integration of watchful human eyes.
Considering both of the examples mentioned above, we can justify that it is important to properly maintain the balance between manual testing and automation testing. So, it is one of the best practices to properly plan this testing process during the test planning stage. It is also important for the developers to choose the correct tools and platforms for this integration. We will discuss the role of different tools and platforms in the later part of this article.
The Use of Playwright Testing
Playwright testing helps the developers to remove the dependencies on the speed and flexibility of a test case. This is because it helps the developers to integrate the web application test cases with the native environment of a browser. This is one of the most important factors that help the developers to smoothly verify the proper functioning of their web application. Moreover, the developers do not need to possess a lot of technical knowledge for executing Playwright test cases. Therefore, the experts recommend Playwright for developers who are new to the world of automation testing. Moreover, this framework helps the developers to freely interact with all the components present in a web application. This is one of the most important factors to improve the productivity of automation test cases.
Playwright also helps the developers to create unique URLs for testing the application. Therefore, the developers do not have to waste any additional time by creating these URLs manually. Moreover, Playwright also helps the developers to automate various data analysis test cases. This means the framework can automatically create random sets of data for analyzing how the web application reacts to different forms of human interaction. One thing that the developers must remember is that JavaScript plays a critical role in Playwright test cases. So, it is safe to say that performing Playwright testing without proper knowledge of JavaScript programming language is almost impossible.
The Importance of Playwright Testing
Now that we have finished discussing all the basic points of Playwright testing, it is time to justify why this is important to conduct these test cases. So let us discuss some of the most important points that help to justify the execution of Playwright testing:
- Playwright helps the developers to initiate Internet syntax and functional flexibility. It is one of the important features that help to analyze whether any subsequent update to the application breaks the functioning of all the previous components. Using this flexibility, the app developing companies can also check whether the components of the application show any abnormal behavior when combined. It is one of the most important testing processes considering that modern web applications have thousands of different components present in them.
- Playwright has a close relation to the contemporary structure of a web browser. This means that the developers can initiate native testing of the application using Playwright test cases. Moreover, all the popular browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge provide native support for Playwright test cases. This helps the developers to improve the accuracy of the test cases and ensure that the web application performs as expected. Using this process, the developers can also analyze how the application reacts to various physical and software changes.
- Playwright’s test automation framework helps developers to test the application from a user’s point of view. This means all the test cases are created in such a way that they can replicate real-world users. Moreover, the framework can generate random loads on the application to analyze its change in behavior depending on the user traffic. All these factors are highly essential to ensure that your application is ready to be released to the real world. This is because a faulty application can not only destroy user satisfaction but also hamper the reputation of the brand.
- As we already discussed in the earlier part of this article, Playwright helps the developers to introduce auto wait in the test cases. This is an important feature as it helps to eliminate the risk of multiple failed test cases. Using auto wait, the developers can also eliminate a common error known as a false positive or false negative. This error arises when all the components of the application are working as expected but the system reports an error and vice versa. Lastly, auto-wait also eliminates the hassle of manually implementing explicit and implicit waits.
Considering all the points that we discussed above, we can easily say that Playwright is one of the most important components of the modern application development lifecycle. Now, let us understand how different tools and platforms can help to improve the Playwright testing experience.
Role of Tools and Platforms in Playwright Testing
Tools and platforms play a very important role in simplifying the Playwright test cases. Various platforms help the developers to also integrate certain additional features for further improving the efficiency of the testing process. For instance, cloud platforms help developers to eliminate the need of maintaining an expensive device testing lab. These labs are also very hard to maintain as thousands of new devices appear in the market every year. Therefore, the developers can use cloud platforms to verify the functioning of the application on hundreds of real devices present on their servers. For performing the test cases on this global platform, the developers only have to pay a minimum license fee. We can use LambdaTest as a reference to understand how cloud platforms can evolve your testing practices:
To begin the discussion, LambdaTest is a secure cloud platform to verify the cross-browser compatibility standards of web applications on a cloud grid. Cross-browser compatibility is one of the most essential modern testing standards to ensure that the application does not lose performance when the user shifts from different operating systems or browser versions. LambdaTest can initiate test cases from multiple automation frameworks like Playwright, Cypress, and Selenium. While using Playwright test cases the developers can initiate the testing process on more than fifty different browsers. Using parallel test execution, LambdaTest can improve the efficiency of Playwright testing by almost 15 times. Parallel test execution is a process of initiating multiple test configurations at the same time. LambdaTest can generate highly accurate test reports by combining hundreds of results from emulators, simulators and real devices.
The Conclusion
So, we can conclude that Playwright testing is one of the most essential segments of the modern app development market. Moreover, it is worth noting that many experts believe that automation testing is the future of the app development market. However, there is one important factor that all developers must consider. It is the high initial expense of introducing automation testing in your test environment. Therefore, the developers need to analyze their business perspective and possible returns on investment before making the transition. The app developing companies also have a critical role in spreading proper awareness regarding this segment. Lastly, the developers must consider different tools and platforms as one of the most integral components of improving the efficiency of Playwright testing.