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name: playwright-testing-patterns description: End-to-end testing patterns with Playwright. Use when writing or debugging E2E tests, focusing on reliability, isolation, and flakiness prevention.

Playwright Testing Patterns

Concise guidance for building reliable, maintainable Playwright tests.

When To Use

• Writing new Playwright E2E tests
• Hardening flaky tests (timing, retries, animations)
• Setting up auth and multi-tenant fixtures
• Managing test data via API or setup projects

Core Patterns

• AAA + Naming: Explicit Arrange/Act/Assert and behavior-based names.
• Selectors: Prefer roles/labels/text; test IDs last.
• Waiting: Web-first assertions and targeted waitForResponse; avoid fixed sleeps.
• Fixtures: Shared auth state and tenant fixtures; cleanup included.
• Data: Use APIs for setup/teardown; reset DB in global setup.
• Flakiness: Reduced motion, retries in CI, expect().toPass for fragile flows.
• Parallel: Only when data isolation is guaranteed.

Resources

• Test Structure — load when organizing tests and isolation.
• Selectors and Forms — load when choosing locators and form patterns.
• Waiting and Assertions — load when coordinating waits and network assertions.
• Authentication and Fixtures — load when sharing auth state or multi-tenant context.
• Test Data Management — load when creating data via API or resetting DB.
• Flakiness Prevention — load when reducing retries/timeouts and handling intermittent failures.
• Parallel Execution — load when enabling parallel mode safely.