Version: Next

Command Line Interface

Playwright comes with the command line tools that run via npx or as a part of the npm scripts.

Usage#

$ python -m playwright

Generate code#

$ python -m playwright codegen wikipedia.org

Run codegen and perform actions in the browser. Playwright CLI will generate JavaScript code for the user interactions. codegen will attempt to generate resilient text-based selectors.

Preserve authenticated state#

Run codegen with --save-storage to save cookies and localStorage at the end. This is useful to separately record authentication step and reuse it later.

$ python -m playwright --save-storage=auth.json codegen
# Perform authentication and exit.
# auth.json will contain the storage state.

Run with --load-storage to consume previously loaded storage. This way, all cookies and localStorage will be restored, bringing most web apps to the authenticated state.

$ python -m playwright --load-storage=auth.json open my.web.app
$ python -m playwright --load-storage=auth.json codegen my.web.app
# Perform actions in authenticated state.

Codegen with custom setup#

If you would like to use codegen in some non-standard setup (for example, use browser_context.route(url, handler)), it is possible to call page.pause() that will open a separate window with codegen controls.

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
with sync_playwright() as p:
# Make sure to run headed.
browser = p.chromium.launch(headless=False)
# Setup context however you like.
context = browser.new_context() # Pass any options
context.route('**/*', lambda route: route.continue_())
# Pause the page, and start recording manually.
page = context.new_page()
page.pause()

Open pages#

With open, you can use Playwright bundled browsers to browse web pages. Playwright provides cross-platform WebKit builds that can be used to reproduce Safari rendering across Windows, Linux and macOS.

# Open page in Chromium
$ python -m playwright open example.com
# Open page in WebKit
$ python -m playwright wk example.com

Emulate devices#

open can emulate mobile and tablet devices from the playwright.devices list.

# Emulate iPhone 11.
$ python -m playwright --device="iPhone 11" open wikipedia.org

Emulate color scheme and viewport size#

# Emulate screen size and color scheme.
$ python -m playwright --viewport-size=800,600 --color-scheme=dark open twitter.com

Emulate geolocation, language and timezone#

# Emulate timezone, language & location
# Once page opens, click the "my location" button to see geolocation in action
$ python -m playwright --timezone="Europe/Rome" --geolocation="41.890221,12.492348" --lang="it-IT" open maps.google.com

Inspect selectors#

During open or codegen, you can use following API inside the developer tools console of any browser.

playwright.$(selector)#

Query Playwright selector, using the actual Playwright query engine, for example:

playwright.$$(selector)#

Same as playwright.$, but returns all matching elements.

playwright.inspect(selector)#

Reveal element in the Elements panel (if DevTools of the respective browser supports it).

playwright.selector(element)#

Generates selector for the given element.

Take screenshot#

# See command help
$ python -m playwright screenshot --help
# Wait 3 seconds before capturing a screenshot after page loads ('load' event fires)
$ python -m playwright \
--device="iPhone 11" \
--color-scheme=dark \
screenshot \
--wait-for-timeout=3000 \
twitter.com twitter-iphone.png
# Capture a full page screenshot
$ python -m playwright screenshot --full-page en.wikipedia.org wiki-full.png

Generate PDF#

PDF generation only works in Headless Chromium.

# See command help
$ python -m playwright pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF wiki.pdf

Known limitations#

Opening WebKit Web Inspector will disconnect Playwright from the browser. In such cases, code generation will stop.