Playwright and Drupal
This session covers how Playwright can be used in Drupal development, providing end-to-end (E2E) and visual regression testing (VRT). I'll show how Playwright complements other Drupal testing frameworks, the concrete tricks (running Playwright tests in all possible ways, storing sessions, executing drush commands, ATK as a head start), and where AI sensibly fits in (and where it doesn't). I bring a set of demos; you pick what you want to see. Aimed at Drupal developers and testers exploring testing tools for Drupal, or weighing a switch from Behat / Cypress / BackstopJS.
Play it right and do it all with Playwright and Drupal
This presentation covers how Playwright can be used for Drupal development: during development, end-to-end (E2E) testing and visual regression testing (VRT).
This presentation is aimed at Drupal developers and testers that are exploring testing tools for Drupal, or already using Behat, Cypress, or BackstopJS and weighing a switch or extension. If you are already using Playwright intensively then this presentation may not contain a lot of new information but you are welcome to share your insights.
I explain what Playwright is, how it works and how to run tests on a Drupal site (drive the full user experience across browsers + pixel-level visual checks), how it compares with PHPUnit / Behat / Cypress, and concrete tricks that make tests run in Drupal: authentication before the test suite runs, create test content, clean up test content.
I will explore the benefits of already existing tools like the contrib Automated Testing Kit (ATK).
Of course, AI 🤖 will be addressed too ✨ — otherwise nobody will attend the session 😉🚀. I cover these questions: can AI do all the testing for you 🪄? Can an AI agent help write tests 💡? Can it interpret the report and file bug tickets 📋? And — the underrated direction 🔮 — can tests guardrail an AI agent 🛡️?
I will prepare various demos and the audience can choose what they like to see: login, content creation, filling out forms, visual regression — you name it.
The presentation will NOT provide:
- History and theory of automated testing
- Testing-tool comparison
- Feature lists
- Testing hipster jargon such as "flakiness" or "budgets"
- Advertisement of SAAS solutions
Boris Doesborg (batigolix) is a Drupal developer at Finalist, based in Utrecht. As Finalist's DevOps lead he focuses on automated testing, documentation, and training for Drupal end-users — the day-to-day that brings him to this talk.
He has worked with Drupal since version 4, across Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Notable past work includes co-developing the European Commission's Drupal platform with a focus on geographic data visualisation (Eurostat NUTS maps), and hospital-admission dashboards for RIVM during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2025 he is a certified WCAG consultant focused on digital accessibility.
Boris has contributed to the Drupal community for over 20 years: 500+ documentation edits, Dutch translation administrator on localize.drupal.org, administrator of drupal.be, and maintainer of 28+ contributed modules. He has organised Drupal events and spoken recently at camps in Berlin, Essen, Ghent, and Drupaljam, and mentors fellow contributors.