puppeteer VS Playwright

I am not in any way associated with the developers at puppeteer, but if you are looking for a way to contribute, they are open source

With the advent of tools like Puppeteer and now Playwright, end-to-end testing has become much easier and more reliable. For anyone who's used Selenium in the past, you know what I'm talking about. Puppeteer has opened the way in terms of E2E tooling, but Playwright has taken it to the next level and made it easier to await for certain selectors or conditions to be fulfilled (via locators), thus making tests more reliable and less flaky. Also, it's a game changer that it introduced a test-runner - this made the integration between the headless browser and the actual test code much smoother.

1.Puppeteer: Puppeteer is a Node library that provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium using the DevTools Protocol. Key Features: More control over Chrome. Enables web scraping. Allows taking screenshots and generating PDFs for UI testing. Measures load times through the Chrome Performance Analysis tool

HTML to PDF conversion is a common requirement in modern web applications. It allows users to save web pages, reports, and other content in a format that is easy to share and print. There are many libraries and services available for converting HTML to PDF, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. In this article, we will compare some of the most popular HTML to PDF renderers in Node.js, including Puppeteer, Playwright, node-html-pdf, and Onedoc.

Playwright seems to be a superior library for working with headless browsers than Puppeteer, but I will go with Puppeteer.

Puppeteer is a Node library that provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium. It's primarily used for browser automation, making it a powerful tool for end-to-end testing of web applications, taking screenshots, and generating pre-rendered content from web pages.

Puppeteer

Website: pptr.dev Repositório: GitHub

# Define variables PYTHON := python3 POETRY := poetry PYTEST := pytest PIP := pip3 PROJECT_NAME := web automation with Pyppeteer .PHONY: install install: $(POETRY) install @echo "Dependency installation complete" $(PIP) install -r requirements.txt @echo "Set env vars LT_USERNAME & LT_ACCESS_KEY" # Procure Username and AccessKey from https://accounts.lambdatest.com/security export LT_USERNAME=himansh export LT_ACCESS_KEY=Ia1MiqNfci .PHONY: install poetry-install: poetry install .PHONY: test test: export NODE_ENV = test .PHONY: test pyunit-pyppeteer: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTHON) tests/pyunit-pyppeteer/test_pyunit_pyppeteer.py .PHONY: test pytest-pyppeteer: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s -n 2 tests/pytest-pyppeteer/test_pytest_pyppeteer_1.py \ tests/pytest-pyppeteer/test_pytest_pyppeteer_2.py .PHONY: test pyunit-pyppeteer-browser-session: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTHON) tests/starting-browser-session/pyunit/test_pyppeteer_browser_session.py .PHONY: test pytest-pyppeteer-browser-session: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s \ tests/starting-browser-session/pytest/test_pyppeteer_browser_session.py .PHONY: test asyncio-run-pyppeteer-browser-session: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTHON) tests/starting-browser-session/asyncio_run/test_pyppeteer_browser_session.py .PHONY: test asyncio-run-complete-pyppeteer-browser-session: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTHON) tests/starting-browser-session/\ asyncio_run_until_complete/test_pyppeteer_browser_session.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-button-click: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/button-click/test_page_class_click.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-activate-tab: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/active-tab/test_page_class_bringtofront.py ###### Testing Custom Environment - https://miyakogi.github.io/pyppeteer/reference.html#environment-variables # Available versions: 113, 121, and default .PHONY: test pyppeteer-custom-chromium-version: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - echo 'Browser Version:' $(CHROMIUM_VERSION) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/custom-configuration/test_launcher_exe_path.py ###### Testing Headless - https://miyakogi.github.io/pyppeteer/reference.html#launcher # Available values: headless and non-headless .PHONY: test pyppeteer-custom-browser-mode: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - echo $(BROWSER_MODE) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/custom-configuration/test_launcher_headless.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-generate-pdf: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/generate-pdf/test_page_class_pdf.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-generate-screenshot: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/generate-screenshots/test_page_class_screenshot.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-cookies: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/handling-cookies/test_page_class_cookies.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-dialog-box: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/handling-dialog-box/test_handling_dialog_box.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-iframe: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/handling-iframe/test_page_class_iframe.py # Like Puppeteer, Navigation operations mentioned below only work in Headless mode # goBack: https://miyakogi.github.io/pyppeteer/reference.html#pyppeteer.page.Page.goBack # goForward: https://miyakogi.github.io/pyppeteer/reference.html#pyppeteer.page.Page.goForward # Bug Link # https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/issues/7739 # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65540674/how-to-error-check-pyppeteer-page-goback .PHONY: test pyppeteer-navigate-ops: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/navigate-operations/test_page_class_navigation_ops.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-request-response: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/request-response/test_page_class_req_resp.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-viewport: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - echo $(BROWSER_MODE) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/setting-useragent-viewports/\ test_page_class_useragent_viewport.py::test_mod_viewport .PHONY: test pyppeteer-non-headless-useragent: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - echo $(BROWSER_MODE) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/setting-useragent-viewports/\ test_page_class_useragent_viewport.py::test_get_nonheadless_user_agent .PHONY: test pyppeteer-headless-useragent: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - echo $(BROWSER_MODE) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/setting-useragent-viewports/\ test_page_class_useragent_viewport.py::test_get_headless_user_agent .PHONY: test pyppeteer-dynamic-content: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - echo $(BROWSER_MODE) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s -n 4 tests/handling-dynamic-content/\ test_page_class_lazy_loaded_content.py .PHONY: test pyppeteer-web-scraping: - echo $(EXEC_PLATFORM) - $(PYTEST) --verbose --capture=no -s tests/web-scraping-content/\ test_scraping_with_pyppeteer.py .PHONY: clean clean: # This helped: https://gist.github.com/hbsdev/a17deea814bc10197285 find . | grep -E "(__pycache__|\.pyc$$)" | xargs rm -rf rm -rf .pytest_cache/ @echo "Clean Succeeded" .PHONY: distclean distclean: clean rm -rf venv .PHONY: help help: @echo "" @echo "install : Install project dependencies" @echo "clean : Clean up temp files" @echo "pyunit-pyppeteer : Running Pyppeteer tests with Pyunit framework" @echo "pytest-pyppeteer : Running Pyppeteer tests with Pytest framework" @echo "pyunit-pyppeteer-browser-session : Browser session using Pyppeteer and Pyunit" @echo "pytest-pyppeteer-browser-session : Browser session using Pyppeteer and Pytest" @echo "asyncio-run-pyppeteer-browser-session : Browser session using Pyppeteer (Approach 1)" @echo "asyncio-run-complete-pyppeteer-browser-session : Browser session using Pyppeteer (Approach 2)" @echo "pyppeteer-button-click : Button click demo using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-activate-tab : Switching browser tabs using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-custom-chromium-version : Custom Chromium version with Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-custom-browser-mode : Headless and non-headless test execution with Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-generate-pdf : Generating pdf using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-generate-screenshot : Generating page & element screenshots with Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-cookies : Customizing cookies with Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-dialog-box : Handling Dialog boxes with Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-iframe : Handling iFrames with Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-navigate-ops : Back & Forward browser operations with Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-request-response : Request and Response demonstration using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-viewport : Customizing viewports using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-non-headless-useragent : Customizing user-agent (with browser in headed mode) using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-headless-useragent : Customizing user-agent (with browser in headless mode) using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-dynamic-content : Handling dynamic web content using Pyppeteer" @echo "pyppeteer-web-scraping : Dynamic web scraping using Pyppeteer"

This library works by creating an instance of WhatsApp web running inside an instance of headless chrome automated by puppeteer. In my testing, I ran into tons of compatibility issues when trying to use these dependencies inside anything other than a bare-bones Node.js + express server. Also, we can’t spin up a new instance of chrome and WhatsApp web each time a user sends a message, this will exhaust our allowed WhatsApp connections (4 max), not to mention that doing this will make the response times painfully slow.

The consensus I could gather is either use playwright or use a workaround to solve it in the puppeteer layer. The root cause of the bug is a websocket size limitation on the CDP protocol for chromium.

With the advent of tools like Puppeteer and now Playwright, end-to-end testing has become much easier and more reliable. For anyone who's used Selenium in the past, you know what I'm talking about. Puppeteer has opened the way in terms of E2E tooling, but Playwright has taken it to the next level and made it easier to await for certain selectors or conditions to be fulfilled (via locators), thus making tests more reliable and less flaky. Also, it's a game changer that it introduced a test-runner - this made the integration between the headless browser and the actual test code much smoother.

In this tutorial, our main focus will be on Playwright web scraping. So what is Playwright? It’s a handy framework created by Microsoft. It's known for making web interactions more streamlined and works reliably with all the latest browsers like WebKit, Chromium, and Firefox. You can also run tests in headless or headed mode and emulate native mobile environments like Google Chrome for Android and Mobile Safari.

// playwright.config.ts import { defineConfig } from "@playwright/test"; /** * See https://playwright.dev/docs/test-configuration. */ export default defineConfig({ testDir: "./src/pages", reporter: "list", use: { baseURL: "http://localhost:5432/", }, timeout: process.env.CI ? 10000 : 4000, // ... more options });

Issues with Playwright

Fast and reliable end-to-end testing for modern web apps | Playwright

This means you cannot place test files outside of this directory, which was brought up as a question on Github some time ago. Initially, I thought it would be nice to add another folder in the repo called "scripts", but Playwright does not allow multiple testDir values.

4.Playwright: Playwright is a browser automation library by Microsoft. Key Features: Supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Provides cross-browser testing capabilities. Allows automating web, mobile, and desktop applications

HTML to PDF conversion is a common requirement in modern web applications. It allows users to save web pages, reports, and other content in a format that is easy to share and print. There are many libraries and services available for converting HTML to PDF, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. In this article, we will compare some of the most popular HTML to PDF renderers in Node.js, including Puppeteer, Playwright, node-html-pdf, and Onedoc.

Playwright [ https://playwright.dev/ ] ✅