Playwright

Modern browser automation for web scraping and testing.

Installation

pip install playwright
playwright install chromium

Quick Start

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch(headless=True)
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto('https://example.com')

    # Get text content
    title = page.locator('h1').text_content()
    print(title)

    browser.close()

Async Usage

import asyncio
from playwright.async_api import async_playwright

async def scrape():
    async with async_playwright() as p:
        browser = await p.chromium.launch(headless=True)
        page = await browser.new_page()
        await page.goto('https://example.com')

        content = await page.locator('h1').text_content()
        await browser.close()
        return content

result = asyncio.run(scrape())

Locators

# By CSS selector
page.locator('div.content')

# By text
page.get_by_text('Submit')

# By role
page.get_by_role('button', name='Submit')

# By test ID
page.get_by_test_id('login-button')

# By placeholder
page.get_by_placeholder('Enter email')

# Chain locators
page.locator('div.container').locator('button.submit')

Waiting

# Wait for element
page.wait_for_selector('div.loaded')

# Wait for network idle
page.wait_for_load_state('networkidle')

# Wait for specific condition
page.locator('button').wait_for(state='visible')

Interactions

# Click
page.locator('button').click()

# Fill input
page.locator('input[name="email"]').fill('test@example.com')

# Select dropdown
page.locator('select').select_option('value1')

# Upload file
page.locator('input[type="file"]').set_input_files('file.pdf')

Extract Data

# Get all matching elements
items = page.locator('div.item').all()
for item in items:
    name = item.locator('h3').text_content()
    price = item.locator('.price').text_content()

# Get inner HTML
html = page.locator('div.content').inner_html()

# Get attribute
href = page.locator('a').get_attribute('href')

When to Use Playwright

• JavaScript-rendered content
• Complex user interactions
• Multi-page workflows
• Screenshot/PDF generation
• Browser testing

When NOT to Use Playwright

• Static HTML pages (use requests + BeautifulSoup)
• API responses
• Already downloaded HTML files
• Simple HTTP requests