[Question] Is it possible to customize both user-data-dir and websocket port

Use case: The goal is to launch a browser on server that’s always up. I want to ensure that I can sign in to that browser and it will retain my credentials. Even after I restart my VM, the browser will retain all the user preferences, cookies etc. The way to achieve this would be to use both wsEndpoint and userDataDir.

From what I have understood:

• use launchPersistentContext to launch with userDataDir but it doesn’t allow wsEndpoint
• use launchServer to launch with wsEndpoint but it doesn’t allow userDataDir

I tried using websocket port with launchPersistentContext but the code crashes with following error log of timeout:

TimeoutError: Timeout 10000ms exceeded during browserType.launchPersistentContext.
[1] app: [browser] <launched> pid=75403
[1] app: [browser] 
[1] app: [browser] DevTools listening on ws://127.0.0.1:45555/devtools/browser/f44a1f4d-ce74-4965-b8e3-bb0546bd46d2
[1] app: [browser] [75403:50179:0716/205303.955435:ERROR:ssl_client_socket_impl.cc(959)] handshake failed; returned -1, SSL error code 1, net_error -202

Is there a way to achieve my use case with Playwright?

[VikramTiwari]

After some more digging through the code I found this env variable PLAYWRIGHT_CHROMIUM_DEBUG_PORT. I can use it to set a port during chromium.launchPersistentContext and the browser does launch with websocket port as well as userDataDirectory.

// PLAYWRIGHT_CHROMIUM_DEBUG_PORT=12345 parent.js
const { chromium } = require("playwright");

(async () => {
	const context = await chromium.launchPersistentContext(`./udd`, {
		headless: false,
	});
	const page = await context.newPage();
	await page.goto("https://google.com");
})();

At this point, I can use the webSocketDebuggerUrl from localhost:12345/json/version to connect to the browser. But from this browser, I can’t get the existing contexts and can only create new incognito contexts.

// node child.js
const { chromium } = require("playwright");

(async () => {
	const browser = await chromium.connect({
		// replace with webSocketDebuggerUrl from localhost:12345/json/version
		wsEndpoint: `ws://localhost:12345/devtools/browser/489bad93-902d-4f2d-b8ad-0be5868d9313`,
	});
	console.log("browser", browser); // CRBrowser instance
	const contexts = browser.contexts();
	console.log("contexts", contexts); // []
})();

This defeats the use case that I am trying to achieve.

I have time to contribute a fix but I don’t fully understand why browser server instances don’t have access to the pre-existing contexts and why are they limited to just incognito contexts. These seems like design decisions and I am sure they are valid ones.

I am hoping that we can add another way to connect. Something like chromium.launchPersistentContextServer which:

• enables usage of user’s data directory
• connects using websocket port
• allows new connections through websocket port/URL
• can utilize both normal and incognito contexts
• can see and use existing contexts for the connected browser

Any pointers on where to look for design docs or how to achieve this would be really helpful and much appreciated. Thanks folks!

[pavelfeldman]

You can now pass --remote-debugging-port as an argument and use connectOverCDP.