playwright-python advanced setup

Question

I am trying to do a custom setup for playwright for use with python similar to my selenium setup, however I'm not at all familiar with Node.js and the only useful guide I could find is: https://playwright.dev/#version=v1.4.2&path=docs%2Finstallation.md&q=skip-browser-downloads

So my question is: If I wanted to install only the chrome library with a custom chrome path (I need to use a specific chrome version) how do I do it with pip? The guide for node uses environment vars. Do they work for pip as well?

P.S: pip search playwright doesn't show playwright-chrome in search results as the above link mentions.

Answer 1

Thanks for the question. I'll share what's possible today, and we would be happy to make changes if you could share your scenario as an issue on playwright-python.

playwright-python can work with environment variables like outlined in the linked doc. For example, you can set environment variable for PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH to specify a custom location for your browser binaries.

It is recommended to use Playwright against bundled browser binaries, since Playwright can often depend on browser-side changes that might not be available in older versions. These browser-side changes are done with the intent to improve execution reliability and breadth of Playwright capabilities.

In case you do want to use Playwright against a non-bundled browser binary, you can set the executablePath while launching a browser. For example, the script below launches Edge instead of the bundled Chromium binary.

Python 3.8.0 (default, Sep 21 2020, 12:25:40)
[Clang 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.32.2)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from playwright import sync_playwright
>>> pw = sync_playwright().start()
>>> browser = pw.chromium.launch(headless=False, executablePath='/Applications/Microsoft Edge Dev.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Edge Dev')

We do not provide browser specific packages like playwright-chromium for Python today, but we are happy to collect feedback on it and make changes.