Barclays Playwright Testing Interview Questions & Answers

Rely on auto-waiting plus a web-first assertion on the final state, disable animations in config for tests and avoid fixed timeouts.

locator.hover() and locator.dragTo(target) perform these actions, with auto-waiting for actionability.

page.route('**/api/items', route => route.fulfill({ json: [...] })) intercepts and replies with test data; route.abort() simulates failures.

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.

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

An object describing how to find an element, re-evaluated on every action so it always targets the current DOM.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Functions that take other functions as arguments or return them, such as map, filter and reduce, or a helper that wraps retry logic around a test step.

Use expect(page).toHaveScreenshot() to compare with stored baselines, with thresholds and masks for dynamic regions.

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

await expect.soft(locator).toHaveText('...') records the failure but lets the test continue, so you see every mismatch in one run.

beforeEach runs the same code before every test in scope; fixtures are lazy, composable and only set up what a test uses.

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

Run npm init playwright@latest, which sets up config, example tests and browsers; execute with npx playwright test.

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.

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

Wait for the popup event with const [popup] = await Promise.all([page.waitForEvent('popup'), page.click('a')]), then interact with popup.

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

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

Placeholders for types that make reusable code type-safe, for example a helper function returning the same type of item that it receives.

Both describe the shape of data. Interfaces are extendable and suit object contracts; type aliases can also model unions and primitives.

Assert the status with expect(res.status()).toBe(200), parse res.json() and check fields, using schema validation for the structure.

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

JavaScript runs one call stack and uses queues for async work; the event loop pushes callbacks from the microtask (promises) and task queues when the stack is empty.

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

Read the next page link or IDs from earlier responses, loop until done and assert counts and uniqueness; pass IDs between calls in the same test.

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

Before acting, Playwright waits for the element to be attached, visible, stable, enabled and able to receive events — so manual waits are rarely needed.

Synchronous code runs line by line and blocks; asynchronous code starts a task and continues, handling the result later with promises or await.

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.

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

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

npx playwright test tests/login.spec.ts, add -g "test title" to match a name, or use test.only while debugging.

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.

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

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.

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.

Use device descriptors such as devices['iPhone 13'] in a project config to emulate viewport, user agent and touch.

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

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

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

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.

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

Define projects for chromium, firefox and webkit in playwright.config.ts, set workers, then run: npx playwright test

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.

Add tags in the title (@smoke) or use the tag option, and run with --grep @smoke or --grep-invert.

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

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

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

An open-source end-to-end testing framework from Microsoft that automates Chromium, Firefox and WebKit through one API, in multiple languages.