What is the recommended way to handle sensitive environment variables like username and password in Playwright?

Answer

To handle sensitive environment variables in Playwright, you can use the following methods:

1. Set variables in the command line: Run tests with your secret username and password set in the command line.

USERNAME=me PASSWORD=secret npx playwright test

2. Read variables from a configuration file: Import defineConfig from '@playwright/test' and read environment variables.

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

export default defineConfig({
  use: {
    baseURL: process.env.STAGING === '1' ? 'http://staging.ray.run/' : 'http://ray.run/',
  },
});

Run tests against a staging or production environment:

STAGING=1 npx playwright test

3. Use .env files: Use the dotenv package to read environment variables directly in the configuration file.

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

// Read from default ".env" file.
dotenv.config();

// Alternatively, read from "../my.env" file.
dotenv.config({ path: path.resolve(__dirname, '..', 'my.env') });

export default defineConfig({
  use: {
    baseURL: process.env.STAGING === '1' ? 'http://staging.ray.run/' : 'http://ray.run/',
  },
});

Edit the .env file to set variable values.

4. Read variables from a CSV file: Use Node.js to read files from the filesystem and parse them with a CSV library before running tests.