[BUG] Getting chromium as undefined with playwright-core

[sudhakar3697]

Context:

• Playwright Version: [playwright-core -v1.2.0]
• Operating System: [Windows (Pro 10 - 1809) & Linux (Ubuntu 20.04)]
• Node version: [v14.4.0 on Windows, v12.18.0 on Linux (Ubuntu 20.04)]
• Browser: [Chromium]

Code Snippet

const { chromium } = require('playwright-core');

(async () => {
    try {
        const browser = await chromium.launch({
            headless: false,
            executablePath: 'c:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe'
        });
        const context = await browser.newContext();
        const page = await context.newPage();
        await page.goto('http://whatsmyuseragent.org/');
        // await browser.close();
    } catch (err) {
        console.log(err);
    }
})();

Describe the bug
Getting chromium as undefined

TypeError: Cannot read property 'launch' of undefined
    at C:\Users\Sudhakar_r_r\Desktop\test-playwright\index.js:5:40
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\Sudhakar_r_r\Desktop\test-playwright\index.js:16:3)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1200:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1220:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1049:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:937:14)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:71:12)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:47

[mxschmitt]

Hi, I agree. Especially when you want to use other Chromium related browsers like Microsoft Edge, its useful to only install the wrapper instead of installing e.g. playwright-chromium or whole playwright.
Workaround would be to use playwight-chromium for now.

[pavelfeldman]

playwright-core is an implementation detail of playwright. If you'd like Playwright that does not download the browsers, use skip environment variable as described in https://playwright.dev/#version=v1.2.0&path=docs%2Finstallation.md&q=skip-browser-downloads. If your use case makes you depend on playwright-core in NPM, we would love to learn why!

[coolgk]

My use case is for WSL, puppeteer-core works with launch options below. playwright basically doesn't work at all in wsl, since this is a Microsoft backed package, WSL support ideally should be prioritised (without the puppeteer workaround config below). I like the high-level utility functions and the great documentation of playwright but it doesn't work in WSL, I even use playwright documentation page as puppeteer tutorials.

  const windowsWSLWorkaround: LaunchOptions = {
    executablePath: '/c/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe',
    userDataDir: '/tmp/puppeteer',
    headless: false
  };
``

[pavelfeldman]

Same options would work with playwright, could you elaborate on doesn't work at all in wsl?

[tyrak]

We are developing (and running) a "desktop application" (think of something akin to the carlo architecture) using puppeteer. For various reasons we have made the decision to use the system-wide installation of chromium.

Controlling whether playwright downloads chromium with an environment variable is not very ergonomic: we have to set the variable in every dev box and in every box where we deploy our app; developers have to remember to do PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD=1 npm install instead of npm install (and similarly for npm update).

In general, the reason why package.json and package-lock.json are great is because you can record in them various decisions you have made (e.g. about your dependencies) without having to communicate them to other developers verbally or through documentation. These decisions then propagate to all boxes automatically. They are even versioned! Git remembers when you made changes to them. This lessens the cognitive load of working with the system.

In our current implementation, we have solved the issue of how to signify that we don't want to use the bundled browser by specifying puppeter-core as a dependency instead of puppeter. It would be great if playwright provided a similar solution. I don't know if this is the right issue to discuss this, if not, I can open a new one.

[aslushnikov]

This is fixed now.