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Version: v2

Playwright

Playwright is a cross-browser library written by Microsoft to aide in cross-browser testing and development. This page helps you get started quickly connecting remotely to Browserless instead of launching browsers locally. You can find more detailed documentation on playwright's documentation site.

We (officially) support Playwright in several languages, as well as using Playwright with an unlocked endpoint via our BrowserQL.

warning

To avoid errors with no apparent reason, please make sure your playwright version is compatible with one of these versions.

We support playwright for Javascript out of the box for all their supported browsers.

Using the Playwright Protocol​

The standard connect method uses Playwright's built-in browser-server protocol to handle the connection. This, generally, is a faster and more fully-featured method since it supports most of the Playwright parameters (such as using a proxy and more). However, since this requires the usage of Playwright in our servers, your client's Playwright version should match ours.

Take a screenshot in Playwright with Firefox​
import playwright from "playwright-core";

const pwEndpoint = `wss://production-sfo.browserless.io/firefox/playwright?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE`;
const browser = await playwright.firefox.connect(pwEndpoint);
const context = await browser.newContext();
const page = await context.newPage();

await page.goto("https://www.nexcess.net/web-tools/browser-information/");
await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 50000));
await page.screenshot({
  path: `firefox.png`,
});

await browser.close();

Similarly, if you need to use another browser, just make sure the Playwright Browser object matches the endpoint.

Using the Chrome DevTools Protocol​

The connectOverCDP method allows Playwright to connect through Chrome's DevTools Protocol. While this is more functionally similar to how puppeteer operates, it does come with a slight performance hit since sessions are more "chatty" over the network versus Playwright's connect. Furthermore, you can only use the Chrome for these connections.

Take a screenshot in Playwright​
import playwright from "playwright";

const browser = await playwright.chromium.connectOverCDP(
  "wss://production-sfo.browserless.io?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE"
);
const context = await browser.newContext();
const page = await context.newPage();

await page.goto("https://www.example.com/");
await page.screenshot({ path: "cdp.png" });

await browser.close();
Using 3rd Party Proxies with Playwright​

When using Playwright with browserless, you can set up a 3rd party proxy by providing proxy configuration to the newContext() method. This is different from how proxies are handled in Puppeteer, as Playwright allows you to specify proxy settings directly at the context level:

import playwright from "playwright-core";

const browser = await playwright.chromium.connectOverCDP(
  "wss://production-sfo.browserless.io?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE"
);
const context = await browser.newContext({
  proxy: {
    server: "http://domain:port",
    username: "username",
    password: "password",
  },
});
const page = await context.newPage();

await page.goto("https://icanhazip.com/");
console.log(await page.content());

await browser.close();

This approach applies the proxy configuration at the context level, which means all pages created from that context will use the specified proxy. For more detailed information about using proxies with Playwright, see our Third Party Proxies documentation.

Code Snippet​

Below is a copy-paste example (remember to replace the API token with yours!) that should be a great starting point since it shows how to use Playwright's methods with file saving capabilities:

import pw from "playwright-core";
import fs from "fs";

async function main() {
  let browser = null;

  try {
    const url = "https://www.example.com";
    const token = "YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE";
    const launchArgs = JSON.stringify({
      args: [`--window-size=1920,1080`],
      headless: false,
      stealth: true,
      timeout: 30000
    });

    console.log("Connecting to browser...");
    browser = await pw.chromium.connect(
      `wss://production-sfo.browserless.io/chromium/playwright?token=${token}&launch=${launchArgs}`
    );

    console.log("Creating new page...");
    const context = await browser.newContext({
      viewport: { width: 1920, height: 1080 },
      userAgent: 'My Custom User Agent/1.0'
    });
    const page = await context.newPage();

    console.log("Navigating to example.com...");
    await page.goto(url);

    const title = await page.title();
    console.log(`The page's title is: ${title}`);
    const html = await page.content();
    fs.writeFileSync("example.html", html);
    console.log(`HTML file saved.`);
    await page.screenshot({ path: "example.png" });
    console.log(`Screenshot saved.`);
    const pdfBuffer = await page.pdf({ format: "A4" });
    fs.writeFileSync("example.pdf", pdfBuffer);
    console.log(`PDF file saved.`);

  } catch (error) {
    console.error("An error occurred:", error.message);
  } finally {
    if (browser) {
      try {
        console.log("Closing browser...");
        await browser.close();
      } catch (closeError) {
        console.error("Error while closing browser:", closeError.message);
      }
    }
  }
}

main().catch(error => {
  console.error("Unhandled error in main function:", error);
});