Answer

Comparing Playwright's Built-In Locators and page.locator()

Playwright offers a range of built-in locators like getByRole(), getByText(), and CSS selectors. These prioritize user-visible elements like text or accessible roles, making them less likely to break when the page changes. They also support custom pseudo-classes like :visible, :has-text(), and more.

// Example of using built-in locators
const element = await page.getByText('Hello, World!');

On the other hand, page.locator() creates a locator using a selector to find an element in the page. It supports CSS and XPath selectors with auto-detection if you omit the prefix (css= or xpath=). However, XPath and CSS selectors tied to DOM structure can break when the DOM changes.

// Example of using page.locator()
const element = await page.locator('.my-class');

From this, we can infer that Playwright's built-in locators might be more robust than raw CSS or XPath selectors with page.locator(). They're designed to handle changes in DOM structure better than raw selectors.

For more details, check out this blog post on understanding the difference between locators and selectors in @playwright/test.