What is a fixture in Playwright?

A fixture is a reusable environment setup that Playwright provides to tests as arguments, such as page or request. Fixtures manage their own lifecycle, initializing before a test runs and cleaning up automatically afterward.

This answer is one piece of Chapter 19: Fixtures.

Custom Fixtures In-Depth
Advanced Fixtures
Building the Fixture Layer

Fixtures are the core dependency injection mechanism in Playwright Test. Instead of relying on mutable global variables or complex before/after hooks across files, tests request the exact resources they need in the test function signature: test('example', async ({ page, context }) => { ... }).

Playwright includes built-in fixtures for common browser primitives: test-scoped fixtures like page (an isolated tab) and context (an isolated browser profile) are isolated between tests, while browser is worker-scoped and reused across tests in the same worker process.

Teams can also define custom fixtures by calling test.extend(), creating reusable dependencies like authenticated user sessions, database clients, or Page Object models. Playwright automatically handles setup order and teardown based on fixture dependencies.

fixture-isolation.spec.js(https://practice.learnplayforge.com)

import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test('first test: adds product to cart', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/catalog.html?mock=static&seed=42&autologin=1');
  const grinder = page.locator('article[data-sku="MRD-1003"]');
  await grinder.getByRole('button', { name: 'Add to cart' }).click();
  await expect(page.getByTestId('cart-total')).toHaveText('₹11,900');
});

test('second test: receives fresh context with empty cart', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/catalog.html?mock=static&seed=42&autologin=1');
  await expect(page.getByTestId('cart-empty')).toBeVisible();
  await expect(page.getByTestId('cart-total')).toHaveText('₹0');
});

Output

Running 2 tests using 1 worker

  ok 1 fixture-isolation.spec.js:3:1 › first test: adds product to cart (1.4s)
  ok 2 fixture-isolation.spec.js:10:1 › second test: receives fresh context with empty cart (338ms)

  2 passed (3.6s)

Test yourself

Test A adds an item to the shopping cart. Test B then runs in the same file requesting { page }. What is the state of the cart in Test B?

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What is a fixture in Playwright?

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