Element selectors
Selectors query elements on the web page for interactions, like page.click, and to obtain ElementHandle
through page.$. Built-in selectors auto-pierce shadow DOM.
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SyntaxSelectors are defined by selector engine name and selector body, engine=body
.
engine
refers to one of the supported engines- Built-in selector engines: css, text, xpath and id selectors
- Learn more about custom selector engines
body
refers to the query string for the respective engine- For
text
, body is the text content - For
css
, body is a css selector
- For
Body format is assumed to ignore leading and trailing white spaces, so that extra whitespace can be added for readability.
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Short-formsFor convenience, common selectors have short-forms:
- Selector starting with
//
or..
is assumed to bexpath=selector
- Example:
page.click('//html')
is converted topage.click('xpath=//html')
.
- Example:
- Selector starting and ending with a quote (either
"
or'
) is assumed to betext=selector
- Example:
page.click('"foo"')
is converted topage.click('text="foo"')
.
- Example:
- Otherwise, selector is assumed to be
css=selector
- Example:
page.click('div')
is converted topage.click('css=div')
.
- Example:
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Chaining selectorsSelectors defined as engine=body
or in short-form can be combined with the >>
token, e.g. selector1 >> selector2 >> selectors3
. When selectors are chained, next one is queried relative to the previous one's result.
For example,
is equivalent to
If a selector needs to include >>
in the body, it should be escaped inside a string to not be confused with chaining separator, e.g. text="some >> text"
.
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Intermediate matchesBy default, chained selectors resolve to an element queried by the last selector. A selector can be prefixed with *
to capture elements that are queried by an intermediate selector.
For example, css=article >> text=Hello
captures the element with the text Hello
, and *css=article >> text=Hello
(note the *
) captures the article
element that contains some element with the text Hello
.
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Best practicesThe choice of selectors determines the resiliency of automation scripts. To reduce the maintenance burden, we recommend prioritizing user-facing attributes and explicit contracts.
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Prioritize user-facing attributesAttributes like text content, input placeholder, accessibility roles and labels are user-facing attributes that change rarely. These attributes are not impacted by DOM structure changes.
The following examples use the built-in text and css selector engines.
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Define explicit contractWhen user-facing attributes change frequently, it is recommended to use explicit test ids, like data-test-id
. These data-*
attributes are supported by the css and id selectors.
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Avoid selectors tied to implementationxpath and css can be tied to the DOM structure or implementation. These selectors can break when the DOM structure changes.
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Examples#
Selector engines#
css and css:lightcss
is a default engine - any malformed selector not starting with //
nor starting and ending with a quote is assumed to be a css selector. For example, Playwright converts page.$('span > button')
to page.$('css=span > button')
.
Playwright augments standard CSS selectors in two ways, see below for more details:
css
engine pierces open shadow DOM by default.- Playwright adds a few custom pseudo-classes like
:visible
.
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Shadow piercingcss:light
engine is equivalent to Document.querySelector
and behaves according to the CSS spec. However, it does not pierce shadow roots, which may be inconvenient when working with Shadow DOM and Web Components. For that reason, css
engine pierces shadow roots. More specifically, any Descendant combinator or Child combinator pierces an arbitrary number of open shadow roots, including the implicit descendant combinator at the start of the selector.
css
engine first searches for elements in the light dom in the iteration order, and then recursively inside open shadow roots in the iteration order. It does not search inside closed shadow roots or iframes.
Note that <open mode shadow root>
is not an html element, but rather a shadow root created with element.attachShadow({mode: 'open'})
.
- Both
"css=article div"
and"css:light=article div"
match the first<div>In the light dom</div>
. - Both
"css=article > div"
and"css:light=article > div"
match twodiv
elements that are direct children of thearticle
. "css=article .in-the-shadow"
matches the<div class='in-the-shadow'>
, piercing the shadow root, while"css:light=article .in-the-shadow"
does not match anything."css:light=article div > span"
does not match anything, because both light-domdiv
elements do not contain aspan
."css=article div > span"
matches the<span class='content'>
, piercing the shadow root."css=article > .in-the-shadow"
does not match anything, because<div class='in-the-shadow'>
is not a direct child ofarticle
"css:light=article > .in-the-shadow"
does not match anything."css=article li#target"
matches the<li id='target'>Deep in the shadow</li>
, piercing two shadow roots.
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CSS extension: visibleThe :visible
pseudo-class matches elements that are visible as defined in the actionability guide. For example, input
matches all the inputs on the page, while input:visible
matches only visible inputs. This is useful to distinguish elements that are very similar but differ in visibility.
Use :visible
with caution, because it has two major drawbacks:
- When elements change their visibility dynamically,
:visible
will give upredictable results based on the timing. :visible
forces a layout and may lead to querying being slow, especially when used withpage.waitForSelector(selector[, options])
method.
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CSS extension: textThe :text
pseudo-class matches elements that have a text node child with specific text. It is similar to the text engine. There are a few variations that support different arguments:
:text("substring")
- Matches when element's text contains "substring" somewhere. Matching is case-insensitive. Matching also normalizes whitespace, for example it turns multiple spaces into one, trusn line breaks into spaces and ignores leading and trailing whitespace.:text-is("string")
- Matches when element's text equals the "string". Matching is case-insensitive and normalizes whitespace.button:text("Sign in")
- Text selector may be combined with regular CSS.:text-matches("[+-]?\\d+")
- Matches text against a regular expression. Note that special characters like back-slash\
, quotes"
, square brackets[]
and more should be escaped. Learn more about regular expressions.:text-matches("value", "i")
- Matches text against a regular expression with specified flags.
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CSS extension: lightcss
engine pierces shadow by default. It is possible to disable this behavior by wrapping a selector in :light
pseudo-class: :light(section > button.class)
matches in light DOM only.
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xpathXPath engine is equivalent to Document.evaluate
. Example: xpath=//html/body
.
Malformed selector starting with //
or ..
is assumed to be an xpath selector. For example, Playwright converts page.$('//html/body')
to page.$('xpath=//html/body')
.
Note that xpath
does not pierce shadow roots.
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text and text:lightText engine finds an element that contains a text node with the passed text. For example, page.click('text=Login')
clicks on a login button, and page.waitForSelector('"lazy loaded text")
waits for the "lazy loaded text"
to appear in the page.
- By default, the match is case-insensitive, ignores leading/trailing whitespace and searches for a substring. This means
text= Login
matches<button>Button loGIN (click me)</button>
. - Text body can be escaped with single or double quotes for precise matching, insisting on exact match, including specified whitespace and case. This means
text="Login "
will only match<button>Login </button>
with exactly one space after "Login". Quoted text follows the usual escaping rules, e.g. use\"
to escape double quote in a double-quoted string:text="foo\"bar"
. - Text body can also be a JavaScript-like regex wrapped in
/
symbols. This meanstext=/^\\s*Login$/i
will match<button> loGIN</button>
with any number of spaces before "Login" and no spaces after. - Input elements of the type
button
andsubmit
are rendered with their value as text, and text engine finds them. For example,text=Login
matches<input type=button value="Login">
.
Malformed selector starting and ending with a quote (either "
or '
) is assumed to be a text selector. For example, Playwright converts page.click('"Login"')
to page.click('text="Login"')
.
text
engine open pierces shadow roots similarly to css
, while text:light
does not. Text engine first searches for elements in the light dom in the iteration order, and then recursively inside open shadow roots in the iteration order. It does not search inside closed shadow roots or iframes.
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id, data-testid, data-test-id, data-test and their :light counterpartsAttribute engines are selecting based on the corresponding attribute value. For example: data-test-id=foo
is equivalent to css=[data-test-id="foo"]
, and id:light=foo
is equivalent to css:light=[id="foo"]
.