Playwright vs axios

@rajucheers I m using Axios too . With Axios ans State mechanism my tests so speed and more manageable

I've got a suite of 1400+ api tests using only playwright api methods, have no issues, suite is fast, the built in test runner and reports with trace files make debugging easy. I haven't used axios directly but I'm pretty sure that's whats being used underneath the playwright implementation.

interesting thoughts

@yusufozt. , what is State mechanism?

@rajucheers Saving axios response to state but you can also run states with Playwright api For e.g saving responses to States and calling them in tests

export const ReportsState = { //API createdDashboardId: {} as string, createdDashboardTitle: {} as string, createdWidgetName:{} as string,

//E2E
createdFakeWidgetName: {} as string,
createdFakeDashboardName: {} as string,
updatedFakeWidgetName: {} as string,
fakeQuadrantNumber: {} as any

}

By the way axios interceptors are useful

We use axios within our playwright framework to do our api handling / calls. I've built out two similar services that utilize axios vs playwright api tools and found that axios provides a little more speed and better async handling for some of our specific api endpoints that require multiple steps.

Ok

I used both axios and playwright. One disadvantage that I see with playwrifght. If I use another context to api to add the auth another tracer is added to html reporter.

For easier troubleshooting I'd recommend Playwright's APIRequestContext (request or page.request) since its API requests and responses are included in Playwright's trace files. I don't think that's the case with axios. https://playwright.dev/docs/trace-viewer-intro

ok

Hmm, it seems that Plawright has its own fetch implementation: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/blob/2f4acbb001f5e057de243fedc075b37bcc7719a7/packages/playwright-core/src/server/fetch.ts

The main benefit for me is how easy we can create AXIOS API clients based on OpenApi documentation using swagger-typescript-api I have used it in two projects and it has been easy to maintain and develop, you can check this examples: https://github.com/pajdekPL/pw_structure/

With PW and TS we can probably at least use typing: https://openapi-ts.dev/introduction

Axios API calls won't get included into the Playwright trace files. The APIRequestContext (request / page.request) API calls will get included.

The trace files and trace viewer are incredibly useful tools for troubleshooting, and it's a waste to have to miss that.

I would advocate for using Playwright's built-in APIRequestContext any day. https://playwright.dev/docs/trace-viewer-intro

Regarding the difference with generating API clients: Probably someone in the community should write OpenAPI client generators for Playwright, then that difference is gone.

I've been dabbling with this, but no where ready, even have a postman collection reader... 🙂 All part of a large tool set i've been working on.