Using the Java version of Playwright from within Karate

initialize-playwright.feature

Feature: Initialize Playwright

  Scenario: Set up a starting point for a UI test using Playwright
    * def playwright = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.Playwright").create()
    * def Browser = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.Browser")
    * def BrowserType = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.BrowserType")
    * def BrowserContext = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.BrowserContext")
    * def SelectOption = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.options.SelectOption")
    * def Page = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.Page")

    * def Paths = Java.type("java.nio.file.Paths")
    * def browser = playwright.chromium().launch((new BrowserType.LaunchOptions()).setHeadless(HEADLESS))
    * def browserContext = browser.newContext()
    * def page = browserContext.newPage()

    # Define a few more objects for waiting until an element is "hidden"
    * def WaitForOptions = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.Locator.WaitForOptions")
    * def WaitForSelectorState = Java.type("com.microsoft.playwright.options.WaitForSelectorState")
    * def HIDDEN = WaitForSelectorState.valueOf('HIDDEN')
    # Example: * page.locator("nav#save-items").waitFor(new WaitForOptions().setState(HIDDEN))

    * page.navigate('https://playwright.dev/java/docs/locators#locate-by-css-or-xpath')

Karate has a mechanism for using Playwright, but that approach did not work for me. Instead, I just made use of Karate's Java interop capabilities to use the Java version of Playwright from within a Karate scenario.

Actually, I use this bit to initialize Playwright at the beginning of UI tests by calling this scenario and then I can use Playwright almost exactly as described in Playwright's documentation.

* call read("classpath:initialize-playwright.feature")

Note: I set the value of HEADLESS inside of karate-config.js, where it reads in the value from a .env file. You could manually define this or just hardcode a value of true or false in place of the variable.