GitHub Action integration with Playwright enables seamless automated testing and deployment workflows for web applications. GitHub Actions, the platform's automation tool, allows these tests to be triggered automatically upon code changes, ensuring rapid feedback and efficient bug detection.

This integration empowers teams to build, test, and deploy with confidence, automating repetitive tasks and enhancing overall development productivity. By combining the versatility of Playwright with the automation capabilities of GitHub Actions, developers can streamline their workflows, delivering high-quality web applications with speed and precision.

Microsoft Playwright is an open-source automation framework for end-to-end testing, browser automation, and web scraping. Developed by Microsoft, Playwright provides a unified API to automate interactions with web browsers like Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. It allows developers to write scripts in various programming languages, including Java, Python, JavaScript, and C#.

Here are some key features of Playwright:

GitHub Actions is an automation platform offered by GitHub that streamlines software development workflows. It empowers users to automate a wide array of tasks within their development processes. By leveraging GitHub Actions, developers/qa engineers can craft customized workflows that are initiated by specific events such as code pushes, pull requests, or issue creation. These workflows can automate essential tasks like building applications, running tests, and deploying code.

Essentially, GitHub Actions provides a seamless way to automate various aspects of the software development lifecycle directly from your GitHub repository.

GitHub Actions is a powerful tool for automating various workflows, including QA automation testing. It allows you to automate your software development processes directly within your GitHub repository. Here are some ways GitHub Actions can be effective in QA automation testing:

GitHub Actions can be used for continuous integration, where automated tests are triggered every time there is a new code commit or a pull request. This ensures that new code changes do not break existing functionality. Automated tests can include unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests.

GitHub Actions supports running workflows on different operating systems and environments. This is especially useful for QA testing, as it allows you to test your application on various platforms and configurations to ensure compatibility and identify platform-specific issues.

GitHub Actions allows you to run tests in parallel, significantly reducing the time required for test execution. Parallel testing is essential for large test suites, as it helps in obtaining faster feedback on the code changes.

You can create custom workflows tailored to your QA automation needs. For example, you can create workflows that run specific tests based on the files modified in a pull request. This targeted testing approach helps in validating specific changes and reduces the overall testing time.

GitHub Actions can seamlessly integrate with popular testing frameworks and tools. Whether you are using Selenium, Cypress, Playwright for web automation, Appium for mobile automation, or any other testing framework, you can configure GitHub Actions to run your tests using these tools

In the next section, you will see how we can integrate GitHub Actions with Playwright to execute the test cases.

The user should have a GitHub account and already be logged in.

For automation purposes, we are taking two examples, one of UI and the other of API.

Below is an example of a UI test case where we log in to the site https://talent500.co/auth/signin. After a successful login, we log out from the application.

Create a repository. In this case, let's name it "Playwright_GitHubAction."

Install Playwright using the following command:

Define your workflow in the YAML file. Here's an example of a GitHub Actions workflow that is used to run Playwright test cases.

In this example, the workflow is triggered on every push and pull request. It sets up Node.js, installs project dependencies, and then runs to execute Playwright tests.

Commit your workflow file () and your Playwright test files. Push the changes to your GitHub repository. GitHub Actions will automatically pick up the changes and run the defined workflow.

As we push the code, the workflow starts to run automatically.

Click on e2e-test. In the screen below, you can see the code being checked out from GitHub, and the browsers start installing.

Once all dependencies and browsers are installed, the test cases start executing. In the screenshot below, you can see all 12 test cases passed in three browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and WebKit).

Click the link above to view the HTML report. Both API and UI test cases are passed.

GitHub Actions automate the testing process, ensuring every code change is thoroughly examined without manual intervention. Playwright's ability to test across various browsers and platforms guarantees a comprehensive evaluation of your application's functionality.

By combining GitHub Actions and Playwright, developers can streamline workflows, ensure code quality, and ultimately deliver better user experiences.