@msw/playwright

Mock Service Worker binding for Playwright.

Motivation

While you can use MSW in Playwright following the default Browser integration, the cross-process messaging in Playwright makes it clunky to work with the worker instance in one process (your tests; Node.js) to affect another (your app; browser).

await page.evaluate(() => {
  // In order to reference the worker instance in your tests,
  // you have to set it on `window` alongside any other
  // functions from the `msw` package you want to use since
  // you cannot reference them in `page.evaluate` directly.
  const { worker, http, graphql } = window.msw
  worker.use(...overrides)
})

This package aims to provide a better developer experience when mocking APIs in Playwright.

Until we ship cross-process request interception, @msw/playwright will rely on the page.route() API to provision the request interception in your tests. That means you don't have to initialize the worker script to use this package. That also means that any page.route() limitations now affect this library. Treat this as an implementation detail that is likely to change in the future.

Usage

npm i msw @msw/playwright

// playwright.setup.ts
import { test as testBase } from '@playwright/test'
import { createNetworkFixture, type NetworkFixture } from '@msw/playwright'
import { handlers } from '../mocks/handlers.js'

interface Fixtures {
  network: NetworkFixture
}

export const test = testBase.extend<Fixtures>({
  // Create a fixture that will control the network in your tests.
  network: createNetworkFixture({
    initialHandlers: handlers,
  }),
})

import { http, HttpResponse } from 'msw'
import { test } from './playwright.setup.js'

test('displays the user dashboard', async ({ network, page }) => {
  // Access the network fixture and use it as the `setupWorker()` API.
  // No more disrupted context between processes.
  network.use(
    http.get('/user', () => {
      return HttpResponse.json({
        id: 'abc-123',
        firstName: 'John',
        lastName: 'Maverick',
      })
    }),
  )

  await page.goto('/dashboard')
})

Comparison

playwright-msw

playwright-msw is a community package that, just like @msw/playwright, aims to provide a better experience when mocking APIs in your Playwright tests.

While playwright-msw is a fantastic tool and a huge inspiration for this package to exist, I believe it approaches the idea at a rather complex angle. That introduces a layer of abstraction that is subjected to the "left behind" problem as it needs to map to any MSW changes explicitly.

	playwright-msw	@msw/playwright
Initialization	createWorkerFixture() is used as a part of your custom fixture.	createNetworkFixture() creates the entire fixture for you, pre-configured.
Implementation	Uses a custom router to match handlers and a custom wrapper around SetupWorker API.	Uses MSW directly. Uses page.route() as the source of the network to route through the handlers.
Feature set	Supports http and graphql namespaces.	Supports all namespaces (http, graphql, ws, any other APIs exposed by MSW in the future).