npm:playwright-mini

README

Playwright Mini

It is simple replacement of puppeteer extra but for playwright.

Why?

Because google killed puppetter. Its not maintained properly. Lots of old bugs related to cookies are not fixed. And I dont see any future with puppetter.

Why renamed Playwright Extra to Playwright Mini?

Actually I didn't realized the original developer have been developing another version of playwright extra. So I think they deserve the original name. I will be handing them the package name in future.

Usage?

First create a project

mkdir automation
cd automation
yarn init

Create a tsconfig.json file and make it look like this. Feel free to adjust it :)

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "target": "es5",
        "module": "commonjs",
        "declaration": false,
        "declarationMap": false,
        "inlineSourceMap": true,
        "outDir": "./dist",
        "rootDir": "./src",
        "noEmit": false,
        "downlevelIteration": true,
        "strict": true,
        "noEmitOnError": true,

        "noUnusedLocals": true,
        "noUnusedParameters": true,
        "noImplicitReturns": true,
        "noFallthroughCasesInSwitch": true,

        "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
        "esModuleInterop": true,

        "experimentalDecorators": true,
        "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
        "skipLibCheck": true,
        "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true
    },
    "files": ["./src/index.ts"],
    "exclude": ["node_modules"]
}

yarn add meow playwright playwright-mini source-map-support
yarn add --dev typescript @types/node

After adding package.json should look like this. (Add scripts section so we can do yarn watch and yarn start later)

{
    "name": "automation",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "main": "index",
    "license": "MIT",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "node dist/main",
        "watch": "tsc --watch"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "meow": "^8.0.0",
        "playwright": "^1.6.1",
        "playwright-mini": "^1.0.0",
        "source-map-support": "^0.5.19"
    },
    "devDependencies": {
        "@types/node": "^14.14.7",
        "typescript": "^4.0.5"
    }
}

Create src directory with index.ts file inside it

import "source-map-support/register"
import { Browser, BrowserContext, firefox, Page } from "playwright"
import { pageStealth } from "playwright-mini"

async function main() {
    // If you want to sue chromium import chromium and change headless as ur wish
    let browser = await firefox.launch({ headless: false })
    let context = await browser.newContext({ ignoreHTTPSErrors: true })

    let page = await context.newPage()

    await pageStealth(page)

    await page.goto("https://fast.com")
}

main().catch((e) => {
    cm.error("Error from Main", e)
})

Why Playwright?

Because the original developer from puppetter repo now maintains playwright. And they are cool :)

Why not same structure as Puppetter Mini?

First I don't like that approach 12 gadget inside 12 folder and one package depending on another package. I am not necessarily saying that approach is bad as its clealy working for thm. I would like to keep it simple and flat.

What is included in this pacakge?

I don't plan adding too much for simplicity. I just want to add only necessary stuff thats required for automation. Like I am not going to include adblocker extension etc.

Stealth
Captcha

Others

You may want to checkout (scrapper tools)[https://github.com/shirshak55/scrapper-tools]. It provides easy way to make scrapper tools and comes with csv parsers and various other widgets.

Thanks

@berstend his repo is main inspiration to do this.
@shirshak55 thats me :D
@playwright-team

Disclaimer

I use it to automate my workflow. Like my bank gives 1 month data but to make summary of my expenditure I need 6 month data. Clearly I don't want to be in mercy of bank so the solution is to automate my workflow.

Usage no npm install needed!