🎭 Playwright Expectly | By Cerios

Comprehensive Playwright test matchers for strings, numbers, dates, arrays, objects, and locators. Simplify your E2E tests with intuitive assertions like toBeAlphanumeric, toHaveAscendingOrder, toBeInTheFuture, and 50+ more matchers.

Features

• 🎯 50+ Custom Matchers — extensive validation for all data types
• 🔤 String Validation — email, URL, UUID, alphanumeric, and more
• 🔢 Number Arrays — sorting, statistics, ranges, and patterns
• 📅 Date Operations — comparisons, ranges, quarters, and business logic
• 🎨 Locator Assertions — DOM element validation and text formatting
• 📦 Object Arrays — sorting, uniqueness, and property validation
• 🤖 Fuzzy Matching — AI-generated text validation (separate @cerios/playwright-expectly-fuzzy package)
• 💪 Type-Safe — full TypeScript support
• ⚡ Lightweight — only Playwright required

Installation

npm install @cerios/playwright-expectly --save-dev

Peer dependency: requires @playwright/test to be installed.

Quick Start

Recommended: a single tests/support module for native expect

Create ONE shared module in your own project that extends Playwright's expect and captures the return value, then re-exports it. Every fixture file and spec file imports test/expect from this module — never straight from @playwright/test.

// tests/support/expect.ts
import "@cerios/playwright-expectly";

import { expect as baseExpect, test as base } from "@playwright/test";
import { expectlyMatchers } from "@cerios/playwright-expectly";

// MUST capture the return value — never call `.extend()` and discard it.
export const expect = baseExpect.extend(expectlyMatchers);
export const test = base;

import { expect, test } from "./support/expect";

test("extended expect example", async ({ page }) => {
	expect("[email protected]").toBeValidEmail();
	expect([1, 2, 3, 4]).toHaveAscendingOrder();
	expect(new Date("2025-01-02")).toBeCloseTo(new Date("2025-01-01"), { days: 1 });
	await expect(page.locator(".username")).toBeAlphanumeric();
});

Capturing the return value is the key detail. Playwright only mutates the original expect in place for matcher names that do not collide with built-ins. The Date matcher toBeCloseTo collides with Playwright's native numeric toBeCloseTo, so the Date version only exists on the value returned by .extend(...).

Standalone expectly

import { expectly } from "@cerios/playwright-expectly";

expectly("[email protected]").toBeValidEmail();
expectly([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).toHaveAscendingOrder();
expectly(new Date()).toBeInTheFuture(new Date("2020-01-01"));
await expectly(page.locator(".username")).toBeAlphanumeric();

Combining with @cerios/playwright-expectly-fuzzy, or your own matchers, via mergeExpects():

// tests/support/expect.ts
import { expect as baseExpect, mergeExpects, test as base } from "@playwright/test";
import { expectlyMatchers } from "@cerios/playwright-expectly";
import { expectlyFuzzyMatchers } from "@cerios/playwright-expectly-fuzzy";

const expectlyExpect = baseExpect.extend(expectlyMatchers);
const fuzzyExpect = baseExpect.extend(expectlyFuzzyMatchers);

export const expect = mergeExpects(baseExpect, expectlyExpect, fuzzyExpect);
export const test = base;

If you only need the standalone package exports, the shorter form is also valid:

import { expectly } from "@cerios/playwright-expectly";
import { expectlyFuzzy } from "@cerios/playwright-expectly-fuzzy";
import { expect as baseExpect, mergeExpects, test as base } from "@playwright/test";

export const expect = mergeExpects(baseExpect, expectly, expectlyFuzzy);
export const test = base;

Note: you may see a setupExpectly() function in older docs or code — it is deprecated. Playwright's expect.extend() only mutates the original expect object in place for matcher names that don't collide with a Playwright built-in. toBeCloseTo collides with Playwright's own built-in numeric matcher, so setupExpectly() can never make the Date toBeCloseTo matcher work, regardless of where it's called. The tests/support pattern above always works correctly.

Available Matchers

• String — toBeValidEmail(), toBeValidUrl(), toBeUUID(), toBeAlphanumeric(), toStartWith(), toEndWith(), toMatchPattern(), and more — 📖 docs
• Number Array — toHaveAscendingOrder(), toHaveAverage(), toBeAllPositive(), toBeMonotonic(), and more — 📖 docs
• Date — toBeCloseTo(), toBeInTheFuture(), toBeSameDay(), toBeInQuarter(), and more — 📖 docs
• Locator — toBeAlphanumeric(), toBeUpperCase(), toHaveSrc(), toHaveHref(), and more — 📖 docs
• Object Array — toHaveObjectsInAscendingOrderBy(), toHaveOnlyUniqueObjects(), and more — 📖 docs
• String Array — toHaveAscendingOrder(), toHaveStrictlyAscendingOrder(), toHaveUniqueValues(), and more — 📖 docs
• Generic — toBeInteger(), toBeAnyOf(), toEqualPartially(), toBeNullish(), and more — 📖 docs

Links

• Full project README
• Changelog
• Issues

License

MIT © Cerios