Overview

Playwright is a modern web test runner. With included features such as:

Cross browser support, including mobile browsers
Multi tab, origin, and user support
Automatic waiting
Test generation
Screenshots and videos

Setting Up Playwright

If the @nx/playwright package is not installed, install the version that matches your nx package version.

❯

npm install --save-dev @nx/playwright

Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

E2E Testing

By default, when creating a new frontend application, Nx will prompt for which e2e test runner to use. Select playwright or pass in the arg --e2eTestRunner=playwright

❯

nx g @nx/web:app frontend --e2eTestRunner=playwright

Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

Add Playwright e2e to an existing project

To generate an E2E project for an existing project, run the following generator

❯

nx g @nx/playwright:configuration --project=your-app-name --project=your-app-name

Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

Optionally, you can use the --webServerCommand and --webServerAddress option, to auto setup the web server option in the playwright config

❯

nx g @nx/playwright:configuration --project=your-app-name --webServerCommand="npx serve your-project-name" --webServerAddress="http://localhost:4200"

Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

Testing Applications

Run nx e2e <your-app-name> to execute e2e tests with Playwright

Selecting Specific Specs

You can use the --grep/-g flag to glob for test files. You can use the --grepInvert/-gv flag to glob for files to not run.

# run the tests in the feat-a/ directory
nx e2e frontend-e2e --grep="**feat-a/**"

# run everything except feat-a/ directory
nx e2e frontend-e2e --grepInvert=**feat-a/**

By default, Playwright will run in headless mode. You will have the result of all the tests and errors (if any) in your terminal. Test output such as reports, screenshots and videos, will be accessible in dist/.playwright/apps/<your-app-name>/. This can be configured with the outputDir configuration options.

Output Caching

If changing the output directory or report output, make sure to update the target outputs so the artifacts are correctly cached

Watching for Changes

With, nx e2e frontend-e2e --ui Playwright will start in headed mode where you can see your application being tested.

From, there you can toggle on the watch icon which will rerun the tests when the spec file updates.

❯

nx e2e <your-app-name> --ui

You can also use --headed flag to run Playwright where the browser can be seen without using the Playwright UI

Specifying a Base Url

The baseURL property within the Playwright configuration can control where the tests visit by default.

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

export default defineConfig({
  // Rest of your config...

  // Run your local dev server before starting the tests
  webServer: {
    command: 'npx serve <your-app-name>',
    url: 'http://localhost:4200',
    reuseExistingServer: !process.env.CI,
  },
  use: {
    baseURL: 'http://localhost:4200', // url playwright visits with `await page.goto('/')`;
  },
});

In order to set different baseURL values for different environments you can pass them via the environment variables and nx configurations or optionally via setting them per the environment they are needed in such as CI

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

const baseUrl =
  process.env.BASE_URL ?? process.env.CI
    ? 'https://some-staging-url.example.com'
    : 'http://localhost:4200';

export default defineConfig({
  // Rest of your config...

  // Run your local dev server before starting the tests
  webServer: {
    command: 'npx serve <your-app-name>',
    url: baseUrl,
    reuseExistingServer: !process.env.CI,
  },
  use: {
    baseURL: baseUrl, // url playwright visits with `await page.goto('/')`;
  },
});

By default Nx, provides a nxE2EPreset with predefined configuration for Playwright.

import { defineConfig } from '@playwright/test';
import { nxE2EPreset } from '@nx/playwright/preset';
import { workspaceRoot } from '@nx/devkit';

// For CI, you may want to set BASE_URL to the deployed application.
const baseURL = process.env['BASE_URL'] || 'http://localhost:4200';

/**
 * Read environment variables from file.
 * https://github.com/motdotla/dotenv
 */
// require('dotenv').config();

/**
 * See https://playwright.dev/docs/test-configuration.
 */
export default defineConfig({
  ...nxE2EPreset(__filename, { testDir: './e2e' }),
  /* Shared settings for all the projects below. See https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-testoptions. */
  use: {
    baseURL,
    /* Collect trace when retrying the failed test. See https://playwright.dev/docs/trace-viewer */
    trace: 'on-first-retry',
  },
  /* Run your local dev server before starting the tests */
  webServer: {
    command: 'npx nx serve <your-app-name>',
    url: baseURL,
    reuseExistingServer: !process.env.CI,
    cwd: workspaceRoot,
  },
});
Nx 15 and lower use @nrwl/ instead of @nx/

This preset sets up the outputDir and HTML reporter to output in dist/.playwright/<path-to-project-root> and sets up chromium, firefox, webkit browsers to be used a browser targets. If you want to use mobile and/or branded browsers you can pass those options into the preset function

export default defineConfig({
  ...nxE2EPreset(__filename, {
    testDir: './e2e',
    includeMobileBrowsers: true, // includes mobile Chrome and Safari
    includeBrandedBrowsers: true, // includes Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge
  }),
  // other settings
});

If you want to override any settings within the nxE2EPreset, You can define them after the preset like so

const config = nxE2EPreset(__filename, {
  testDir: './e2e',
  includeMobileBrowsers: true, // includes mobile Chrome and Safari
  includeBrandedBrowsers: true, // includes Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge
});
export default defineConfig({
  ...config
  retries: 3,
  reporters: [...config.reporters, /* other reporter settings */],
});

See the Playwright configuration docs for more options for Playwright.