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CI GitHub Actions

Introduction​

Playwright tests can be run on any CI provider. In this section we will cover running tests on GitHub using GitHub actions. If you would like to see how to configure other CI providers check out our detailed doc on Continuous Integration.

When installing Playwright using the VS Code extension or with npm init playwright@latest you are given the option to add a GitHub Actions workflow. This creates a playwright.yml file inside a .github/workflows folder containing everything you need so that your tests run on each push and pull request into the main/master branch.

You will learn​

Setting up GitHub Actions​

On push/pull_request​

Tests will run on push or pull request on branches main/master. The workflow will install all dependencies, install Playwright and then run the tests. It will also create the HTML report.

.github/workflows/playwright.yml
name: Playwright Tests
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main, master ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main, master ]
jobs:
  test:
    timeout-minutes: 60
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
    - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
      with:
        node-version: 18
    - name: Install dependencies
      run: npm ci
    - name: Install Playwright Browsers
      run: npx playwright install --with-deps
    - name: Run Playwright tests
      run: npx playwright test
    - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
      if: ${{ !cancelled() }}
      with:
        name: playwright-report
        path: playwright-report/
        retention-days: 30

On push/pull_request (sharded)​

GitHub Actions supports sharding tests between multiple jobs. Check out our sharding doc to learn more about sharding and to see a GitHub actions example of how to configure a job to run your tests on multiple machines as well as how to merge the HTML reports.

Via Containers​

GitHub Actions support running jobs in a container by using the jobs.<job_id>.container option. This is useful to not pollute the host environment with dependencies and to have a consistent environment for e.g. screenshots/visual regression testing across different operating systems.

.github/workflows/playwright.yml
name: Playwright Tests
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main, master ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main, master ]
jobs:
  playwright:
    name: 'Playwright Tests'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: mcr.microsoft.com/playwright:v1.43.0-jammy
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 18
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
      - name: Run your tests
        run: npx playwright test
        env:
          HOME: /root

On deployment​

This will start the tests after a GitHub Deployment went into the success state. Services like Vercel use this pattern so you can run your end-to-end tests on their deployed environment.

.github/workflows/playwright.yml
name: Playwright Tests
on:
  deployment_status:
jobs:
  test:
    timeout-minutes: 60
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.event.deployment_status.state == 'success'
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
    - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
      with:
        node-version: 18
    - name: Install dependencies
      run: npm ci
    - name: Install Playwright
      run: npx playwright install --with-deps
    - name: Run Playwright tests
      run: npx playwright test
      env:
        PLAYWRIGHT_TEST_BASE_URL: ${{ github.event.deployment_status.target_url }}

Create a Repo and Push to GitHub​

Once you have your GitHub actions workflow setup then all you need to do is Create a repo on GitHub or push your code to an existing repository. Follow the instructions on GitHub and don't forget to initialize a git repository using the git init command so you can add, commit and push your code.

Create a Repo and Push to GitHub

Opening the Workflows​

Click on the Actions tab to see the workflows. Here you will see if your tests have passed or failed.

Opening the Workflows

On Pull Requests you can also click on the Details link in the PR status check.

pr status checked

Viewing Test Logs​

Clicking on the workflow run will show you the all the actions that GitHub performed and clicking on Run Playwright tests will show the error messages, what was expected and what was received as well as the call log.

Viewing Test Logs

HTML Report​

The HTML Report shows you a full report of your tests. You can filter the report by browsers, passed tests, failed tests, skipped tests and flaky tests.

Downloading the HTML Report​

In the Artifacts section click on the playwright-report to download your report in the format of a zip file.

Downloading the HTML Report

Viewing the HTML Report​

Locally opening the report will not work as expected as you need a web server in order for everything to work correctly. First, extract the zip, preferably in a folder that already has Playwright installed. Using the command line change into the directory where the report is and use npx playwright show-report followed by the name of the extracted folder. This will serve up the report and enable you to view it in your browser.

npx playwright show-report name-of-my-extracted-playwright-report

viewing the HTML report

To learn more about reports check out our detailed guide on HTML Reporter

Viewing the Trace​

Once you have served the report using npx playwright show-report, click on the trace icon next to the test's file name as seen in the image above. You can then view the trace of your tests and inspect each action to try to find out why the tests are failing.

playwright trace viewer

Publishing report on the web​

Downloading the HTML report as a zip file is not very convenient. However, we can utilize Azure Storage's static websites hosting capabilities to easily and efficiently serve HTML reports on the Internet, requiring minimal configuration.

  1. Create an Azure Storage account.

  2. Enable Static website hosting for the storage account.

  3. Create a Service Principal in Azure and grant it access to Azure Blob storage. Upon successful execution, the command will display the credentials which will be used in the next step.

    az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "github-actions" --role "Storage Blob Data Contributor" --scopes /subscriptions/<SUBSCRIPTION_ID>/resourceGroups/<RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME>/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME>

  4. Use the credentials from the previous step to set up encrypted secrets in your GitHub repository. Go to your repository's settings, under GitHub Actions secrets, and add the following secrets:

    • AZCOPY_SPA_APPLICATION_ID
    • AZCOPY_SPA_CLIENT_SECRET
    • AZCOPY_TENANT_ID

    For a detailed guide on how to authorize a service principal using a client secret, refer to this Microsoft documentation.

  5. Add a step that uploads the HTML report to Azure Storage.

    .github/workflows/playwright.yml
    ...
        - name: Upload HTML report to Azure
          shell: bash
          run: |
            REPORT_DIR='run-${{ github.run_id }}-${{ github.run_attempt }}'
            azcopy cp --recursive "./playwright-report/*" "https://<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME>.blob.core.windows.net/\$web/$REPORT_DIR"
            echo "::notice title=HTML report url::https://<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME>.z1.web.core.windows.net/$REPORT_DIR/index.html"
          env:
            AZCOPY_AUTO_LOGIN_TYPE: SPN
            AZCOPY_SPA_APPLICATION_ID: '${{ secrets.AZCOPY_SPA_APPLICATION_ID }}'
            AZCOPY_SPA_CLIENT_SECRET: '${{ secrets.AZCOPY_SPA_CLIENT_SECRET }}'
            AZCOPY_TENANT_ID: '${{ secrets.AZCOPY_TENANT_ID }}'

The contents of the $web storage container can be accessed from a browser by using the public URL of the website.

note

This step will not work for pull requests created from a forked repository because such workflow doesn't have access to the secrets.

What's Next​