Apple Playwright Testing Interview Questions & Answers

Scripts that run once before or after the whole run, for seeding data, starting services or creating authentication state.

Playwright supports multiple browsers, tabs, languages and has auto-waiting and tracing; Selenium has the widest ecosystem; Cypress runs in-browser with a great UI but has more limits across tabs.

A browser is the engine instance; a context is an isolated session (cookies, storage); a page is a tab inside a context.

Use a library such as zod or ajv to define the expected schema and parse the response to fail on missing or wrongly typed fields.

Run in parallel with sharding, reuse authentication state, set up data through APIs, avoid unnecessary waits, run smoke on every commit and the full suite nightly.

page.screenshot() for captures and config options use: { screenshot: 'only-on-failure', video: 'retain-on-failure' } for automatic evidence.

obj?.a?.b safely reads nested properties and returns undefined instead of throwing if something in the chain is missing.

POST the query and variables as JSON to the single endpoint and assert both data and errors fields in the response.

Use dotenv files per environment, read them in playwright.config and set baseURL and credentials from variables, selecting with an ENV flag.

Workflow: checkout → setup-node → npm ci → npx playwright install --with-deps → npx playwright test → upload playwright-report as an artifact.

Use the official Playwright image which contains browsers and dependencies, mount the project and run npx playwright test for consistent CI environments.

all waits for every promise and rejects on the first failure; allSettled waits for all and reports each outcome; race settles with the first one to finish.

A class receives page in its constructor, stores locators as properties and exposes actions like login(user, pass). Tests call page objects, not raw locators.

TypeScript + POM + custom fixtures, environment configs, API helpers for test data, tags like @smoke, sharding across CI machines, retries with traces, HTML/Allure reports, lint and review rules.

Set them in the context options (geolocation, permissions, timezoneId, locale) to simulate users from other regions.

Send invalid payloads or missing auth and assert 400, 401 or 404 codes and the error message bodies.

const [newPage] = await Promise.all([ context.waitForEvent('page'), page.getByText('Open').click(), ]); await newPage.waitForLoadState();

waitForSelector is a lower-level wait; locator assertions are preferred as they retry and are more readable.

var is function-scoped and hoisted. let and const are block-scoped; const can't be reassigned (though an object it points to can change). Prefer const, then let.

The action runs without waiting, so the next step may run first — causing flaky failures or 'Target closed' errors. The @typescript-eslint/no-floating-promises rule catches it.

Auto-waiting, a built-in test runner, Chromium/Firefox/WebKit with one API, network interception, the trace viewer and parallel runs out of the box — usually faster and less flaky.

Turn on trace: 'on-first-retry', open the trace viewer, check network and timing, replace hard waits with web-first assertions, isolate test data and check for sharding conflicts.

undefined means a variable has not been assigned; null is an intentional empty value.

Use --debug or the Inspector, page.pause(), UI mode, the trace viewer and headed runs with slowMo.

Use npx playwright test --shard=1/4 in each CI job and merge reports afterwards to reduce total run time.

npm is the Node package manager. package.json lists the project's dependencies and scripts, such as the command that runs the tests.

Both describe object shapes. Interfaces can be extended and merged; type aliases can also describe unions and primitives. Use interfaces for page or test-data shapes, types for unions.

Destructuring pulls values from arrays or objects into variables; spread expands an array or object into another, useful for copying and merging config.

Tag tests (in the title or with { tag: '@smoke' }) and run: npx playwright test --grep @smoke (use --grep-invert to exclude).

Use timeout and expect.timeout in config, test.setTimeout() for one test and test.slow() for known slower tests.

string, number, boolean, null, undefined, symbol, bigint and object (including arrays and functions).

TypeScript adds static types on top of JavaScript and compiles to it. Types catch errors early and give better autocomplete, which helps in larger test suites.

await request.post('/api/users', { data: { name: 'Asha' } }) automatically sets JSON headers and serialises the payload.

List, dot, line, HTML, JSON and JUnit reporters, plus integrations such as Allure, configurable per environment.

Capture the download event, save it with download.saveAs, then read the file in Node and assert on name, size or content.

Log in with request.post, call request.storageState(), and create a browser context using that state.

Declarations of var and functions are moved to the top of their scope at compile time; let and const are hoisted but stay in the temporal dead zone until declared.

Use page.frameLocator('#frame').getByRole(...) so actions work inside the iframe with auto-waiting.

Set retries in the config or CLI and failed tests re-run in a fresh context, with trace recorded on first retry to diagnose flakiness.

map transforms each item, filter keeps items that match a condition, and reduce combines all items into a single value.

Use try-catch with await, or .catch() on promises, and make sure rejected promises are never left unhandled.

await page.route('**/api/users', route => route.fulfill({ status: 200, json: [{ id: 1, name: 'Test' }] }) );

Cover happy path, validation errors, auth and permissions, boundary values, idempotency, schema, performance and data cleanup.

A Locator is lazy, re-resolved on every action and auto-waits (recommended). An ElementHandle points to one DOM node and can go stale.

Use request.post with multipart: { file: { name, mimeType, buffer } } and assert the response and stored file details.

Use page.waitForResponse(res => res.url().includes('/api/orders') && res.ok()) together with the action that triggers it.

Playwright locators pierce open shadow roots by default, so getByRole and CSS locators work without special handling.

A type alias describes a shape or union of values; an enum creates a named set of constants that exists at runtime.

User-facing ones: getByRole, getByText, getByLabel, getByPlaceholder and getByTestId, which are more resilient than CSS or XPath.

test.step groups actions into named steps in reports; annotations such as test.skip, test.fixme and test.slow communicate intent and adjust behaviour.

Add retries with backoff for the API step, set a suitable timeout, and use mocks for non-critical dependencies.

const [download] = await Promise.all([ page.waitForEvent('download'), page.getByText('Export').click(), ]); await download.saveAs('reports/file.csv');

Use environment variables or .env files, a baseURL in config, API calls for setup and cleanup, and unique data per run.

API testing checks services directly and is fast and stable; UI testing checks the full user experience in the browser and is slower.

Use the request fixture: const res = await request.get('/api/users'); expect(res.ok()).toBeTruthy(); const body = await res.json();

Reusable setup/teardown units injected into tests (page, context, request). You can extend test with custom fixtures such as loggedInPage.

Register page.on('dialog', d => d.accept()) before the action triggers the dialog.