Understanding Locators in Playwright

Understanding Locators in Playwright

In Playwright, locators are a key concept used to identify and interact with web elements on a page—such as buttons, input fields, links, and more. They are essential for writing reliable and maintainable test scripts.


✅ What Is a Locator?

A locator is an abstraction that points to a specific DOM element. Instead of selecting the element immediately (like in Selenium), Playwright uses lazy evaluation—interacting with the element only when needed, which makes tests more robust and faster.


🛠️ How to Use Locators in Playwright

🔹 Basic Locator Example:

python

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locator = page.locator("text=Login")

await locator.click()

This finds the element with the visible text "Login" and clicks it.


🔍 Common Locator Types

Locator Type Example Use Case

Text locator("text=Submit") Find elements by visible text

CSS Selector locator("button.btn-primary") Match based on CSS classes or tags

XPath locator("//button[@id='save']") Use XPath expressions

ID or Attribute locator("[id='username']") Match by HTML attributes

Role Selector locator("role=button[name='Login']") Use ARIA roles and names for accessibility

Nth Match locator("input").nth(1) Select a specific element from a group


💡 Best Practices

Prefer text or role-based locators for clarity and resilience.


Avoid brittle selectors like long XPaths or absolute paths.


Use get_by_* methods in Python for readability (like get_by_role, get_by_text, etc.).


🧪 Playwright Locator Example in Python:

python

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from playwright.async_api import async_playwright


async def run():

    async with async_playwright() as p:

        browser = await p.chromium.launch()

        page = await browser.new_page()

        await page.goto("https://example.com")


        # Using locator

        login_button = page.get_by_text("Login")

        await login_button.click()


        await browser.close()

🔍 Conclusion

Locators in Playwright are powerful, flexible, and designed to create stable and readable test scripts. Mastering them is key to becoming effective in Playwright automation.

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