Playwright for Rust

🎭 Rust language bindings for Microsoft Playwright

Status: 🚧 Active Development - Not yet ready for production use

🎯 Why playwright-rust?

Read our WHY.md to understand the vision, timing, and philosophy behind this project.

TL;DR: Rust is emerging as a serious web development language, with frameworks like Axum and Actix gaining traction. AI coding assistants are making Rust accessible to more developers. Test-Driven Development is experiencing a renaissance as the optimal way to work with AI agents. These trends are converging now, and they need production-quality E2E testing. playwright-rust fills that gap by bringing Playwright's industry-leading browser automation to the Rust ecosystem.

Roadmap and Goals

See Development Roadmap for plans and status of the development approach for playwright-rust.

Goal: Build this library to a production-quality state for broad adoption as @playwright/rust or playwright-rs. Provide official-quality Rust bindings for Microsoft Playwright, following the same architecture as playwright-python, playwright-java, and playwright-dotnet.

How It Works

playwright-rust follows Microsoft's proven architecture for language bindings:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ playwright-rs (Rust API)                     │
│ - High-level, idiomatic Rust API             │
│ - Async/await with tokio                     │
│ - Type-safe bindings                         │
└─────────────────────┬────────────────────────┘
                      │ JSON-RPC over stdio
┌─────────────────────▼────────────────────────┐
│ Playwright Server (Node.js/TypeScript)       │
│ - Browser automation logic                   │
│ - Cross-browser protocol abstraction         │
│ - Maintained by Microsoft Playwright team    │
└─────────────────────┬────────────────────────┘
                      │ Native protocols
        ┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
        ▼             ▼             ▼
    Chromium      Firefox       WebKit

This means:

• ✅ Full feature parity with Playwright (JS/Python/Java/.NET)
• ✅ Cross-browser support (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit)
• ✅ Automatic updates when Playwright server updates
• ✅ Minimal maintenance - protocols handled by Microsoft's server
• ✅ Production-tested architecture used by millions

API Design Philosophy

Following Playwright's cross-language consistency:

1. Match Playwright API exactly - Same method names, same semantics
2. Idiomatic Rust - Use Result, async/await, builder patterns where appropriate
3. Type safety - Leverage Rust's type system for compile-time safety
4. Auto-waiting - Built-in smart waits like other Playwright implementations
5. Testing-first - Designed for reliable end-to-end testing

Installation

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
playwright-rs = "0.8"  # Auto-updates to latest 0.8.x
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }

See the CHANGELOG for version history and features.

Browser Installation (Required)

Important: Browsers must be installed separately using the Playwright CLI.

The library bundles Playwright driver version 1.56.1. You must install matching browser versions:

# Install all browsers (recommended)
npx playwright@1.56.1 install

# Or install specific browsers
npx playwright@1.56.1 install chromium firefox webkit

Why version matters: Each Playwright release expects specific browser builds. Using playwright@1.56.1 ensures you get compatible browsers (chromium-1194, firefox-1495, webkit-2215).

In CI/CD: Add this to your GitHub Actions workflow:

- name: Install Playwright Browsers
  run: npx playwright@1.56.1 install chromium firefox webkit --with-deps

The version constant is also available in code:

use playwright_rs::PLAYWRIGHT_VERSION;

println!("Install with: npx playwright@{} install", PLAYWRIGHT_VERSION);

What happens if I don't install browsers? You'll get a helpful error message with the correct install command when trying to launch a browser.

Development

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.85+
• Node.js 18+ (for Playwright server and browser installation)
• tokio async runtime

Building from Source

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/playwright-rust.git
cd playwright-rust

# Install pre-commit hooks
pip install pre-commit
pre-commit install

# Build
cargo build

Installing Browsers

After building, install browsers as described in Browser Installation above:

cargo build
npx playwright@1.56.1 install chromium firefox webkit

The build script automatically downloads the Playwright driver to drivers/ (gitignored). CI handles browser installation automatically - see .github/workflows/test.yml.

Platform Support: ✅ Windows, macOS, Linux

Running Tests

Note: This project uses cargo-nextest for faster test execution. Install it once globally:

cargo install cargo-nextest

# All tests (recommended - faster)
cargo nextest run

# All tests (standard cargo)
cargo test

# Integration tests only (requires browsers)
cargo nextest run --test '*'

# Specific test
cargo nextest run test_launch_chromium

# With logging
RUST_LOG=debug cargo nextest run

# Doc-tests (nextest doesn't run these)
# See CLAUDE.md "Documentation Testing Strategy" for details

# Compile-only check (fast, used in pre-commit)
cargo test --doc --workspace

# Execute all ignored doctests (requires browsers, what CI does)
cargo test --doc --workspace -- --ignored

# Execute specific crate's doctests
cargo test --doc -p playwright-rs -- --ignored

Running Examples

Note: See examples/ for usage examples.

# Run a single example
cargo run --package playwright-rs --example basic

# Run all examples
for example in crates/playwright/examples/*.rs; do
    cargo run --package playwright-rs --example $(basename "$example" .rs) || exit 1
done

Contributing

This project aims for production-quality Rust bindings matching Playwright's standards. Contributions should:

• Follow Playwright API conventions
• Include comprehensive tests
• Maintain type safety
• Document public APIs with examples
• Pass CI checks (fmt, clippy, tests)

License

Apache-2.0 (same as Microsoft Playwright)

Acknowledgments

• Microsoft Playwright Team - For the amazing browser automation framework
• playwright-python - API design reference
• Folio Project - Initial driver for development needs