Reuse Cookie and LocalStorage

In most cases, authentication state is stored in cookie or local storage. When we just want to keep authenticated, it is a good solution to dump/load 'storage state' (= Cookie + LocalStorage). https://playwright.dev/docs/next/auth#reuse-authentication-state

• Dump storage state using BrowserContext#storage_state with path: /path/to/state.json
• Load storage state by specifying the parameter storageState: /path/to/state.json into Browser#new_context or Browser#new_page

Example

Generally in browser automation, it is very difficult to bypass 2FA or reCAPTCHA in login screen. In such cases, we would consider

• Authenticate manually by hand
• Resume automation with the authentication result

require 'playwright'
require 'pry'

force_login = !File.exist?('github_state.json')

Playwright.create(playwright_cli_executable_path: 'npx playwright') do |playwright|
  if force_login
    # Use headful mode for manual operation.
    playwright.chromium.launch(headless: false, channel: 'chrome') do |browser|
      page = browser.new_page
      page.goto('https://github.com/login')

      # Login manually.
      binding.pry

      page.context.storage_state(path: 'github_state.json')
    end
  end

  playwright.chromium.launch do |browser|
    page = browser.new_page(storageState: 'github_state.json')
    page.goto('https://github.com/notifications')
    page.screenshot(path: 'github_notification.png')
  end
end

When we execute this script at the first time (without github_state.json), login screen is shown:

and input credentials manually:

and hit exit in Pry console.

     9:
    10:     # Login manually. Hit `exit` in Pry console after authenticated.
    11:     require 'pry'
    12:     binding.pry
    13:
 => 14:     page.context.storage_state(path: 'github_state.json')
    15:   end if force_login
    16:
    17:   playwright.chromium.launch do |browser|
    18:     page = browser.new_page(storageState: 'github_state.json')
    19:     page.goto('https://github.com/notifications')

[1] pry(main)> exit

then we can enjoy automation with keeping authenticated. Login screen is never shown until github_state.json is deleted :)