What is the method to enable retries for failing tests in Playwright?

Answer

Sure, you can retry failing tests in @playwright/test. By default, this feature is turned off. To enable it, use the command npx playwright test --retries=3 to give failing tests three retry attempts.

You can also set this up in the playwright.config.ts file using defineConfig({retries: 3}).

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

export default defineConfig({
  retries: 3
});

Playwright categorizes tests as "passed", "flaky", or "failed". You can detect retries at runtime with testInfo.retry.

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

test('my test', async ({ page }, testInfo) => {
  if (testInfo.retry) await cleanSomeCachesOnTheServer();
});

You can also specify retries for a specific group of tests or a single file with test.describe.configure().

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

test.describe(() => {
  test.describe.configure({ retries: 2 });

  test('test 1', async ({ page }) => {
    // ...
  });

  test('test 2', async ({ page }) => {
    // ...
  });
});

If you have dependent tests that need to always run together and in order, use test.describe.serial().

Remember, it's usually better to make your Playwright Tests isolated so they can be efficiently run and retried independently. For more insights, check out this blog post on robust testing with Playwright.