The Ultimate Playwright Guide for 2026 – Installation, Framework Structure, Best Practices, and CI/CD Setup

Dec 12, 2025 David Richard

The Ultimate Playwright Guide for 2026 – Installation, Framework Structure, Best Practices, and CI/CD Setup

Introduction

Modern software teams increasingly require an ability to release more frequently with guaranteed quality checks and automation pipeline setup. In this regard, Playwright has emerged as one of the most powerful end-to-end testing tools in a rather short span of time by becoming extremely fast, providing cross-browser testing, smart auto-waiting, and offering efficient API testing.

Even with these advantages, many QA engineers find it hard to make the leap from writing simple Playwright scripts to building a scalable, maintainable, CI-ready automation framework.

In this blog, we walk through exactly how one would build a complete enterprise-grade Playwright framework from the ground up.

By the end of this post, you will learn:

  • How to set up and install Playwright the right way
  • How to Design a Scalable, Modular, and Reusable Test Automation Framework
  • How to use Page Object Model (POM) and also implement custom fixtures
  • How 8support multiple environments (dev/qa/stage/prod)
  • How to Integrate Allure Reporting 9o
  • How to configure CI/CD pipelines - GitHub Actions
  • Best practices for building future-proof Playwright test suites

This is a complete guide for you. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced automation engineer upgrading your existing framework.

Playwright Record and Play A Quick Guide to Codegen for Test Automation - Read more.png

1. Why Choose Playwright?

Before building the framework, let's understand briefly why Playwright is preferred by modern automation teams.

Top Benefits

✔ Cross-browser support

  • Chromium
  • Firefox
  • WebKit
  • Mobile emulation

✔ Auto-waiting and stable tests

Playwright waits automatically for UI elements to become stable, reducing flaky tests.

✔ API testing built-in

Run UI and API tests in the same framework.

✔ Parallel execution by default

Run tests faster using multiple workers.

✔ Easy CI/CD integration

Works seamlessly with GitHub, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, GitLab, etc.

✔ Excellent tracing, video, and debugging tools

Screenshots, network logs, and videos available for every failure.

Because of all these strengths, companies are shifting heavily from Selenium / Cypress / TestNG to Playwright.

2. Playwright Installation (Step-by-Step)

Step 1: Initialize Project

mkdir playwright-framework
cd playwright-framework
npm init -y

Step 2: Initialize Project

npm install @playwright/test --save-dev
npx playwright install

Step-by-Step Guide Installing Playwright for Java - Read more.png

Step 3: Project Structure (Recommended)

│── config/ 
│   ├── playwright.config.base.js 
│   ├── dev.config.js 
│   ├── qa.config.js 
│── fixtures/ 
│   └── custom-fixtures.js 
│── pages/ 
│   ├── login.page.js 
│   ├── dashboard.page.js 
│── tests/ 
│   ├── example.spec.js 
│   ├── api.spec.js 
│── utils/ 
│   ├── logger.js 
│   ├── testData.js 
│── Dockerfile 
│── azure-pipelines.yml 
│── package.json 
│── README.md 

With this structure, the framework remains highly scalable and well-suited for enterprise environments.

3. Designing a Scalable Playwright Framework

3.1 Base Configuration

A base config ensures all environments share the same global settings.

Example: playwright.config.base.js

  • Retries
  • Reporters
  • Workers
  • Browser settings
  • Video and trace retention

This becomes the core of your framework.

3.2 Environment-Specific Configs

Every company has multiple environments:

  • DEV
  • QA
  • STAGE
  • UAT

Playwright allows environment overrides like:

dev.config.js

use: { baseURL: "https://dev.example.com" }

qa.config.js

use: { baseURL: "https://qa.example.com" }

This allows: 'admin@example.com

npm run test:qa

This is crucial for teams running tests on multiple environments.

3.3 Implementing Page Object Model (POM)

POM keeps locators and actions separate from tests.

Benefits:

✔ Less code duplication

✔ Easy maintenance

✔ Cleaner test cases

✔ Reusable components

Example Login Page:

class LoginPage {
constructor(page) {
this.page = page;
this.email = page.locator('#email');
this.password = page.locator('#password');
this.loginBtn = page.locator('[data-test=login]');
}
async goto() {
await this.page.goto('/login');
}
async login(email, pwd) {
await this.email.fill(email);
await this.password.fill(pwd);
await this.loginBtn.click();
}
}

3.4 Custom Fixtures

exports.test = base.extend({

loginPage: async ({ page }, use) => {

await use(new LoginPage(page));

}

});

Usage:

test('login test', async ({ loginPage }) => {

await loginPage.goto();

await loginPage.login('admin@example.com', 'Pass123');

});

3.5 Utilities and Helpers

module.exports = {

info: (...args) => console.log('[INFO]', ...args)

};

4. Integrating Allure Reports

  • Test steps
  • Attachments
  • Failure screenshots
  • Logs
  • Environment details
Install
npm install allure-commandline allure-playwright --save-dev

Add Allure Reporter

reporter: [
['list'],
['allure-playwright']
]
Generate report
npm run allure:generate
npm run allure:open
Allure becomes extremely useful during CI/CD debugging.

5. Writing Tests

5.1 UI Test

test('valid login', async ({ page }) => {
await loginPage.login('admin@example.com', 'Admin123');
});

5.2 API Test

const resp = await request.get('/posts/1');

5.3 Data-Driven Test

for (const user of users) {
test(`login as ${user}`, async () => {});
}

5.4 Tag-Based Test

test.describe('@smoke', () => { ... })

Run smoke suite:

npx playwright test --grep @smoke

6. Running the Framework in CI/CD

6.1 GitHub Actions CI

  • Install Node
  • Install dependencies
  • Install Playwright browsers
  • Run tests
  • Upload artifacts
  • Upload allure results

6.2 Azure DevOps Pipeline (Full YAML)

  • npm install
  • playwright install
  • run tests based on environment
  • publish Allure + Playwright reports

7. Dockerizing Playwright

  • Consistent execution
  • No local dependency issues
  • Easy cloud execution
  • Scalable pipeline executions
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/playwright:focal
 WORKDIR /workspace
 COPY package.json package-lock.json ./
 RUN npm ci
 COPY . .
 RUN npx playwright install --with-deps
 ENTRYPOINT ["npx", "playwright", "test"]

8. Best Practices for a Scalable and Reusable Framework

✔ Use Page Objects

✔ Avoid hard-coded values

✔ Keep tests independent

✔ Use tags (smoke, regression, sanity)

✔ Use parallel execution wisely

✔ Add retries for flaky elements

✔ Store test results & artifacts in CI

✔ Use reusable fixtures

✔ Maintain logs inside test steps

✔ Keep framework modular

9. Why Playwright Framework Architecture Matters

  • Unmaintainable test suites
  • High flaky test rate
  • Slow execution
  • Difficult CI integration
  • No proper environment support

A properly designed framework solves all these problems.

10. Conclusion

With its speed, reliability, and robust features, Playwright has reshaped the way modern automation testing is done. But the real power of Playwright is unlocked only when you build a solid, scalable framework around it, one that supports:

  • Page Objects
  • Fixtures
  • Multi-environment testing
  • Advanced reporting
  • CI/CD execution
  • API + UI + Data-driven tests

In this blog, we walked through the entire process, from installation to CI/CD deployment.

If you follow this structure and best practices, your automation framework will remain fast, stable, maintainable, and future-proof.

automation testing

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