Make your end-to-end tests more stable with Playwright’s user-first selectors
AI Summary
This video explains how to use user-first locators in Playwright for end-to-end testing and monitoring websites. It highlights why relying solely on CSS selectors or XPath can lead to flaky tests due to changes in implementation details or translations. Instead, Playwright encourages using built-in locators like
getByRole,getByText, andgetByLabelwhich consider the user’s perspective and accessibility roles, making tests more stable and maintainable. The video demonstrates selecting buttons usinggetByRolewith accessible names, filtering locators based on surrounding elements, and resolving ambiguous matches by narrowing scope or indexing. The approach promotes better collaboration between testers and developers by enforcing proper accessibility roles and naming in the UI. It concludes that while no single locator strategy fits all scenarios, prioritizing user-first locators results in less flaky tests and encourages good web development practices.