@arghajit/playwright-pulse-report

Playwright Pluse Report

The ultimate Playwright reporter — Interactive dashboard with historical trend analytics, CI/CD-ready standalone HTML reports, and sharding support for scalable test execution.

Live Demo

Documentation: Pulse Report

Available Scripts

The project provides these utility commands:

Command	Description
generate-report	Generates playwright-pulse-report.html, Loads screenshots and images dynamically from the attachments/ directory, Produces a lighter HTML file with faster initial load, Requires attachments/ directory to be present when viewing the report
generate-pulse-report	Generates playwright-pulse-static-report.html, Self-contained, no server required, Preserves all dashboard functionality
merge-pulse-report	Combines multiple parallel test json reports, basically used in sharding
generate-trend	Analyzes historical trends in test results
generate-email-report	Generates email-friendly report versions
send-email	Generates email-friendly report versions & Distributes report via email

Run with npm run <command>

🛠️ How It Works

1. Reporter Collection:

   • Custom reporter collects detailed results during test execution
   • Handles sharding by merging .pulse-shard-results-*.json files

2. JSON Output:

   • Generates comprehensive playwright-pulse-report.json

3. Visualization Options:

   • Static HTML: Self-contained report file with all data
   • Email: Send formatted reports to stakeholders

🏁 Quick Start

1. Installation

npm install @arghajit/playwright-pulse-report@latest --save-dev

2. Configure Playwright

// playwright.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "@playwright/test";
import * as path from "path";

const PULSE_REPORT_DIR = path.resolve(__dirname, "pulse-report");

export default defineConfig({
  reporter: [
    ["list"],
    [
      "@arghajit/playwright-pulse-report",
      {
        outputDir: PULSE_REPORT_DIR,
      },
    ],
  ],
  // Other configurations...
});

3. Generate Reports

After running tests:

npx generate-pulse-report  # Generates static HTML
npx send-email            # Sends email report

📊 Report Options

Option 1: Static HTML Report (Embedded Attachments)

npm run generate-pulse-report
or,
npx generate-pulse-report

• Generates playwright-pulse-static-report.html
• Self-contained, no server required
• Preserves all dashboard functionality

Option 2: HTML Report (Attachment-based)

npm run generate-report
or,
npx generate-report

• Generates playwright-pulse-report.html
• Loads screenshots and images dynamically from the attachments/ directory
• Produces a lighter HTML file with faster initial load
• Requires attachments/ directory to be present when viewing the report

Option 3: Email Report

1. Configure .env:

   RECIPIENT_EMAIL_1=[e-mail]
   RECIPIENT_EMAIL_2=[e-mail]
   # ... up to 5 recipients

2. Send report:

   npx send-email

NOTE: Email will be sent with a light-weight html file, which can be opened in mail preview application.

🤖 AI Analysis

The dashboard includes AI-powered test analysis that provides:

• Test flakiness detection
• Performance bottlenecks
• Failure pattern recognition
• Suggested optimizations

⚙️ CI/CD Integration

Basic Workflow

# Upload Pulse report from each shard (per matrix.config.type)
- name: Upload Pulse Report results
  if: success() || failure()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: pulse-report
    path: pulse-report/

# Download all pulse-report-* artifacts after all shards complete
- name: Download Pulse Report artifacts
  uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
  with:
    pattern: pulse-report
    path: downloaded-artifacts

# Merge all sharded JSON reports into one final output
- name: Generate Pulse Report
  run: |
    npm run script merge-report
    npm run generate-report [or, npm run generate-pulse-report]

# Upload final merged report as CI artifact
- name: Upload Pulse report
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: pulse-report

Sharded Workflow

# Upload Pulse report from each shard (per matrix.config.type)
- name: Upload Pulse Report results
  if: success() || failure()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: pulse-report-${{ matrix.config.type }}
    path: pulse-report/

# Download all pulse-report-* artifacts after all shards complete
- name: Download Pulse Report artifacts
  uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
  with:
    pattern: pulse-report-*
    path: downloaded-artifacts

# Organize reports into a single folder and rename for merging
- name: Organize Pulse Report
  run: |
    mkdir -p pulse-report
    for dir in downloaded-artifacts/pulse-report-*; do
      config_type=$(basename "$dir" | sed 's/pulse-report-//')
      cp -r "$dir/attachments" "pulse-report/attachments"
      cp "$dir/playwright-pulse-report.json" "pulse-report/playwright-pulse-report-${config_type}.json"
    done

# Merge all sharded JSON reports into one final output
- name: Generate Pulse Report
  run: |
    npm run merge-report
    npm run generate-report [or, npm run generate-pulse-report]

# Upload final merged report as CI artifact
- name: Upload Pulse report
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: pulse-report
    path: pulse-report/

🧠 Notes

• npm run generate-report generates a HTML report ( screenshots/images will be taken in realtime from 'attachments/' directory ).
• npm run generate-pulse-report generates a fully self-contained static HTML report( All screenshots and images are embedded directly into the HTML using base64 encoding, which simplifies distribution but may result in larger file sizes and longer load times ).
• Each shard generates its own playwright-pulse-report.json inside pulse-report/.
• Artifacts are named using the shard type (matrix.config.type).
• After the test matrix completes, reports are downloaded, renamed, and merged.
• merge-report is a custom Node.js script that combines all JSON files into one.

🚀 Upgrade Now

npm install @arghajit/playwright-pulse-report@latest

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⚙️ Advanced Configuration

Handling Sequential Test Runs

By default, the reporter will overwrite the playwright-pulse-report.json file on each new test run. This is usually what we want. However, if we run tests sequentially in the same job, like this:

npx playwright test test1.spec.ts && npx playwright test test2.spec.ts

By default, In this above scenario, the report from test1 will be lost. To solve this, you can use the resetOnEachRun option.

// playwright.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "@playwright/test";
import * as path from "path";

// Define where the final report JSON and HTML should go
const PULSE_REPORT_DIR = path.resolve(__dirname, "pulse-report"); // Example: a directory in your project root

export default defineConfig({
  reporter: [
    ["list"],
    [
      "@arghajit/playwright-pulse-report",
      {
        outputDir: PULSE_REPORT_DIR,
        // Add this option
        resetOnEachRun: false, // Default is true
      },
    ],
  ],
  // ...
});

How it works when resetOnEachRun: false:

• On the first run, it saves report-1.json to a pulse-report/pulse-results directory and creates the main playwright-pulse-report.json from it.
• On the second run, it saves report-2.json to the same directory.
• It then automatically reads both report-1.json and report-2.json, merges them, and updates the main playwright-pulse-report.json with the combined results.

This ensures your final report is always a complete summary of all sequential test runs.

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Pulse Dashboard

Real-time Playwright Test Monitoring & Analysis

A Next.js component & CLI tool for visualizing Playwright test executions. Provides real-time insights, historical trends, and failure analysis.

Key Features:

• Interactive test result visualization
• Historical trend analysis
• Failure pattern identification

Quick Start:

npx pulse-dashboard
  or,
npm run pulse-dashboard

(Run from project root containing pulse-report/ directory)

NPM Package: playwright-pulse-report

Tech Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Playwright

Part of the Playwright Pulse Report ecosystem

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📬 Support

For issues or feature requests, please Contact Me.

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🙌🏼 Thank you

Special Thanks to @Suman Vishwakarma, for continuous UAT feedback.

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Made by Arghajit Singha | MIT Licensed