playwrightvsselenium
playwright is a Python package that allows developers to automate web browsers for end-to-end testing, web scraping, and web performance analysis. It is built on top of WebKit, Mozilla's Gecko, and Microsoft's EdgeHTML, and it is designed to be fast, reliable, and easy to use.
playwright is similar to Selenium, but it provides a more modern and powerful API, with features such as automatic waiting for elements, automatic retries, and built-in support for browser contexts, which allow you to open multiple pages in a single browser instance.
Playwright also provides an asynchronous client which makes scaling playwright-powered web scrapers easier than alternatives (like Selenium)
Selenium is a Python package that allows developers to automate web browsers. It provides a way for developers to interact with web browsers programmatically, simulating user interactions such as clicking links, filling out forms, and navigating between pages. Selenium can be used to automate tasks such as web scraping, testing web applications, and automating repetitive tasks on websites.
Selenium is built on top of WebDriver, which is a browser automation API that allows Selenium to interact with web browsers. Selenium supports a wide variety of web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
One of the main advantages of Selenium is that it can be used with many different programming languages, not only Python, and it also supports different platforms.
The package also provide a set of APIs that allows you to interact with web pages, you can locate elements, interact with them, get their properties and interact with javascript, you can use the APIs to automate the browser and interact with web pages in the same way a human user would.
Selenium is widely used in web scraping, web testing, and other automation tasks because it allows developers to automate web browsers in a way that is very similar to how a human user would interact with the browser.
Overall, Selenium is a powerful and versatile tool for automating web browsers and is widely used in web scraping, web testing, and other automation tasks.
Example Use
from playwright import sync_playwright
# Start Playwright
with sync_playwright() as playwright:
# Launch a browser instance
browser = playwright.chromium.launch()
# Open a new context (tab)
context = browser.new_context()
# Create a new page in the context
page = context.new_page()
# Navigate to a website
page.goto("https://www.example.com")
# Find an element by its id
element = page.get_by_id("example-id")
# Interact with the element
element.click()
# Fill an input form
page.get_by_name("example-name").fill("example text")
# Find and click a button
page.get_by_xpath("//button[text()='Search']").click()
# Wait for the page to load
page.wait_for_selector("#results")
# Get the page title
print(page.title)
# Close the browser
browser.close()
from selenium import webdriver
# Create an instance of the webdriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
# Navigate to a website
driver.get("http://www.example.com")
# Find an element by its id
element = driver.find_element_by_id("example-id")
# Interact with the element
element.click()
# Find an element by its name
element = driver.find_element_by_name("example-name")
# Fill an input form
element.send_keys("example text")
# Find and click a button
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//button[text()='Search']").click()
# Wait for the page to load
driver.implicitly_wait(10)
# Get the page title
print(driver.title)
# Close the browser
driver.close()