What are some methods to create more specific locators in Playwright?

Answer

Sure, let's dive into how you can extend a locator in Playwright.

Chaining and Filtering

You can chain locators together using getByRole() and filter them by text or another locator. This helps you create more specific locators that can withstand changes in the DOM. Here's an example:

const button = page.locator('button').withText('Submit');

Prioritizing User-Facing Attributes

When creating locators, it's better to use user-facing attributes instead of XPath or CSS selectors. This is because your DOM structure may change, causing your tests to fail if they depend on specific CSS classes or XPath expressions.

Using Playwright's Test Generator Tool

Playwright's test generator tool can help you generate locators. This tool analyzes your page and generates tests with prioritized locators based on role, text, and test id attributes.

Using Playwright's Locators API

Playwright's new Locators API provides even more flexibility for extending locators. A Locator represents a view of one or more elements on a page and captures the logic needed to retrieve those elements at any given moment.

const locator = page.locator('.my-class');

In summary, there are several ways in which you can extend a locator in Playwright. For more information, check out Understanding the Difference Between Locators and Selectors in @playwright/test.