Migration Principles

• No need for "webdriver-manager" / Selenium.
• Protractor’s ElementFinder ⇄ Playwright Test Locator
• Protractor’s waitForAngular ⇄ Playwright Test auto-waiting
• Don’t forget to await in Playwright Test

Cheat Sheet

Example

Protractor:

describe('angularjs homepage todo list', function() {
  it('should add a todo', function() {
    browser.get('https://angularjs.org');

    element(by.model('todoList.todoText')).sendKeys('first test');
    element(by.css('[value="add"]')).click();

    const todoList = element.all(by.repeater('todo in todoList.todos'));
    expect(todoList.count()).toEqual(3);
    expect(todoList.get(2).getText()).toEqual('first test');

    // You wrote your first test, cross it off the list
    todoList.get(2).element(by.css('input')).click();
    const completedAmount = element.all(by.css('.done-true'));
    expect(completedAmount.count()).toEqual(2);
  });
});

Line-by-line migration to Playwright Test:

const { test, expect } = require('@playwright/test'); // 1

test.describe('angularjs homepage todo list', () => {
  test('should add a todo', async ({ page }) => { // 2, 3
    await page.goto('https://angularjs.org'); // 4

    await page.locator('[ng-model="todoList.todoText"]').fill('first test');
    await page.locator('[value="add"]').click();

    const todoList = page.locator('[ng-repeat="todo in todoList.todos"]'); // 5
    await expect(todoList).toHaveCount(3);
    await expect(todoList.nth(2)).toHaveText('first test', {
      useInnerText: true,
    });

    // You wrote your first test, cross it off the list
    await todoList.nth(2).getByRole('textbox').click();
    const completedAmount = page.locator('.done-true');
    await expect(completedAmount).toHaveCount(2);
  });
});

Migration highlights (see inline comments in the Playwright Test code snippet):

1. Each Playwright Test file has explicit import of the test and expect functions
2. Test function is marked with async
3. Playwright Test is given a page as one of its parameters. This is one of the many useful fixtures in Playwright Test.
4. Almost all Playwright calls are prefixed with await
5. Locator creation with [method: Page.locator] is one of the few methods that is sync.

Polyfilling waitForAngular

Playwright Test has built-in auto-waiting that makes protractor's waitForAngular unneeded in general case.

However, it might come handy in some edge cases. Here's how to polyfill waitForAngular function in Playwright Test:

1. Make sure you have protractor installed in your package.json

2. Polyfill function

   async function waitForAngular(page) {
     const clientSideScripts = require('protractor/built/clientsidescripts.js');
   
     async function executeScriptAsync(page, script, ...scriptArgs) {
       await page.evaluate(`
         new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
           const callback = (errMessage) => {
             if (errMessage)
               reject(new Error(errMessage));
             else
               resolve();
           };
           (function() {${script}}).apply(null, [...${JSON.stringify(scriptArgs)}, callback]);
         })
       `);
     }
   
     await executeScriptAsync(page, clientSideScripts.waitForAngular, '');
   }
   

   If you don't want to keep a version protractor around, you can also use this simpler approach using this function (only works for Angular 2+):

   async function waitForAngular(page) {
     await page.evaluate(async () => {
       // @ts-expect-error
       if (window.getAllAngularTestabilities) {
         // @ts-expect-error
         await Promise.all(window.getAllAngularTestabilities().map(whenStable));
         // @ts-expect-error
         async function whenStable(testability) {
           return new Promise(res => testability.whenStable(res));
         }
       }
     });
   }
   

3. Polyfill usage

   const page = await context.newPage();
   await page.goto('https://example.org');
   await waitForAngular(page);
   

Playwright Test Super Powers

Once you're on Playwright Test, you get a lot!

• Full zero-configuration TypeScript support
• Run tests across all web engines (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) on any popular operating system (Windows, macOS, Ubuntu)
• Full support for multiple origins, (i)frames, tabs and contexts
• Run tests in parallel across multiple browsers
• Built-in test artifact collection

You also get all these ✨ awesome tools ✨ that come bundled with Playwright Test:

• Playwright Inspector
• Playwright Test Code generation
• Playwright Tracing for post-mortem debugging

Further Reading

Learn more about Playwright Test runner:

• Getting Started
• Fixtures
• Locators
• Assertions
• Auto-waiting

Source: docs/src/protractor-js.md