Fixtures and Test Config

Open the JSON and compare it with the address under test. Usual causes are an origins entry recorded for a different origin, a session kept in sessionStorage which the file never captures, or state saved before the application had written it.

Fixture setup is charged to the test timeout by default, so a 45-second fixture blows a 30-second budget. Give that fixture its own timeout in its options tuple instead of raising the suite-wide timeout for every test.

A Playwright worker-scoped fixture is built once and the same instance is given to every test that worker runs, so a mutation by one test survives into the next. Run alone, a test always gets a freshly built value.

Setup that produces something the test uses belongs in a fixture: it names what it provides, pairs its own teardown, and runs only for tests that ask for it. Local arrangement for one file can stay in a hook.

Judge each step by who needs it, how often it must run, and whether it needs a browser. Split one broad setup project into narrow ones so a project waits only for what it lists.

Make it a project when the variation is an axis the whole suite should run under and be reported on separately. Keep it in test.use when only certain specs need it, since a project re-runs everything.

globalTimeout caps the wall-clock duration of an entire Playwright run and defaults to no limit. Per-test budgets bound one test each, so a large suite and its retries can still run for hours with no test misbehaving.

Promote a Playwright fixture to worker scope only when its value is read-only once built and its setup cost is measured and material. Test scope stays the default, because per-test isolation is what keeps a suite diagnosable as it grows.

By destructuring the built-in browserName fixture, which is a plain string: chromium, firefox or webkit. Tests use it to branch, most often to skip a case that cannot run on one engine.

Combine them with mergeTests from the Playwright test package: mergeTests(staffTest, auditTest) returns one test object carrying both fixture sets. Importing both objects side by side does not work, and mergeExpects does the same job for custom matchers.

Use the object when one process both mints and consumes the session: context.storageState() with no path returns it, and browser.newContext accepts it directly. Use a file path when another process, run or config must read the state.