PlaywrightEx (PlaywrightEx v0.2.0)

Elixir client for the Playwright node.js server.

Automate browsers like Chromium, Firefox, Safari and Edge. Helpful for web scraping and agentic AI.

Experimental

This is an early stage, experimental, version. The API is subject to change.

Getting started

Add dependency
```
 # mix.exs
 {:playwright_ex, "~> 0.1"}
```

Install playwright and browser

 npm --prefix assets i -D playwright
 npm --prefix assets exec -- playwright install chromium --with-deps

Start connection (or add to supervision tree)

 {:ok, _} = PlaywrightEx.Supervisor.start_link(timeout: 1000)

Use it

 alias PlaywrightEx.{Browser, BrowserContext, Frame}

 {:ok, browser} = PlaywrightEx.launch_browser(:chromium, timeout: 1000)
 {:ok, context} = Browser.new_context(browser.guid, timeout: 1000)

 {:ok, %{main_frame: frame}} = BrowserContext.new_page(context.guid, timeout: 1000)
 {:ok, _} = Frame.goto(frame.guid, "https://elixir-lang.org/", timeout: 1000)
 {:ok, _} = Frame.click(frame.guid, Selector.link("Install"), timeout: 1000)

References:

Code extracted from phoenix_test_playwright.
Inspired by playwright-elixir.
Official playwright node.js client docs.

Comparison to playwright-elixir

playwright-elixir built on the python client and tried to provide a comprehensive client from the start. playwright_ex instead is a ground-up implementation. It is not intended to be comprehensive. Rather, it is intended to be simple and easy to extend.

Summary

Types

guid()

unknown_opt()

Functions

launch_browser(type, opts)

Launches a new browser instance.

send(msg, timeout)

Send message to playwright.

subscribe(pid \\ self(), guid)

Subscribe to playwright responses concerning a resource, identified by its guid, or its descendants. Messages in the format {:playwright_msg, %{} = msg} will be sent to pid.

Types

guid()

@type guid() :: String.t()

unknown_opt()

@type unknown_opt() :: {Keyword.key(), Keyword.value()}

Functions

launch_browser(type, opts)

@spec launch_browser(atom(), [[PlaywrightEx.BrowserType.launch_opt() | unknown_opt()]]) ::
  {:ok, %{guid: guid()}} | {:error, any()}

Launches a new browser instance.

Options

:timeout (timeout/0) - Required. Maximum time for the operation (milliseconds).
:channel (String.t/0) - Browser distribution channel.
:executable_path (String.t/0) - Path to a browser executable to run instead of the bundled one.
:headless (boolean/0) - Whether to run browser in headless mode.
:slow_mo - Slows down Playwright operations by the specified amount of milliseconds.

send(msg, timeout)

@spec send(%{guid: guid(), method: atom()}, timeout()) ::
  %{result: map()} | %{error: map()}

Send message to playwright.

Don't use this! Prefer Channels functions. If a function is missing, consider opening a PR to add it.