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Getting Started with Playwright for PHP

Welcome to Playwright for PHP! This guide will walk you through setting up your first project and running a basic browser automation script. Our goal is to get you up and running in just a few minutes.

Requirements

Before you begin, please ensure your development environment meets the following requirements:

  • PHP 8.3+
  • Node.js 20+ (This is used by the underlying Playwright server)
  • Composer for managing PHP dependencies.

Installation

Getting started with Playwright for PHP is a two-step process. First, you add the library to your project using Composer. Second, you run a command to download the necessary browser binaries.

Step 1: Install the Library

Navigate to your project's root directory and run the following Composer command:

composer require playwright-php/playwright

Step 2: Install Browsers

Playwright needs to download browser binaries (for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit) to work. The library ships with a PHP installer that works the same for applications and for this repository. Run the following command from your project's root:

vendor/bin/playwright-install --browsers

Need Playwright to pull in recommended system dependencies as well (handy on fresh CI runners)?

vendor/bin/playwright-install --with-deps

Both commands ensure the bundled Playwright server is up to date and then download the latest browser versions into the local Playwright cache.

If you need a custom browsers cache location (for example in CI), set PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH:

PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=/path/to/.playwright-browsers vendor/bin/playwright-install --browsers

Your First Script

You're now ready to write your first script. Create a new file named example.php and add the following code:

<?php

require __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';

use Playwright\Playwright;

// Start a new Playwright client and launch a browser.
// By default, it launches a headless Chromium instance.
$context = Playwright::chromium();

// Create a new page within the browser context.
$page = $context->newPage();

// Navigate to a website.
$page->goto('https://example.com');

// Get the title of the page and print it to the console.
echo $page->title() . PHP_EOL; // Outputs: "Example Domain"

// Take a screenshot and save it as 'screenshot.png'.
$page->screenshot('screenshot.png');

// Export the page to PDF on disk.
$page->pdf('invoice.pdf', ['format' => 'A4']);

// Or grab the PDF bytes directly without keeping files around.
$pdfBytes = $page->pdfContent();
file_put_contents('inline-invoice.pdf', $pdfBytes);

// Close the browser context and all its pages.
$context->close();

To run the script, execute it from your terminal:

php example.php

You should see "Example Domain" printed to your console, and a screenshot.png file will be created in the same directory.

Congratulations, you've successfully run your first Playwright for PHP script!

What's Next?

Now that you have the library installed and running, you can explore its core concepts to understand how to build more complex and reliable automations.

  • Core Concepts: Learn about the fundamental building blocks of Playwright like Browsers, Contexts, Pages, and Locators.
  • Testing with PHPUnit: See how to integrate Playwright into your PHPUnit test suite for seamless end-to-end testing.