README

🌅 Dawn

Run your existing Laravel Dusk suite on Playwright - without rewriting a single test.

Documentation · Migration guide · Why it's a game-changer · Compatibility · Changelog

Note

Dawn does not swap Dusk's WebDriver driver; it reimplements Dusk's public Browser API on Playwright.

Your test bodies stay exactly as they are - visit, type, press, waitFor, assertSee, within, loginAs, @dusk selectors, all of it - while the browser underneath is driven by Playwright: native auto-waiting, no ChromeDriver binary to manage, no Selenium.

$this->browse(function (Browser $browser) {
    $browser->visit('/login')
        ->type('email', 'taylor@laravel.com')
        ->type('password', 'secret')
        ->press('Login')
        ->waitForLocation('/dashboard')
        ->assertSee('Welcome back');
});

That test runs unchanged under Dawn.

Why Dawn is a game-changer
Migrate in 3 steps
Installation
Configuration
Databases
Compatibility
Roadmap

Why Dawn is a game-changer

Dusk's flakiness and ops overhead come almost entirely from WebDriver: a separate ChromeDriver binary you version-match by hand, and PHP-side polling loops that race the browser. Dawn keeps Dusk's ergonomics and deletes that layer.

	Dusk (Selenium / ChromeDriver)	Dawn (Playwright)
Waiting	PHP-side polling loops	Playwright's native auto-wait
Flakiness	Actions fire before the DOM is ready	Every action waits for actionability first
Browser setup	ChromeDriver binary + version drift	`playwright install` - always matched
Browsers	Chrome	Chromium, Firefox, WebKit (`DAWN_BROWSER`)
Speed	Selenium wire protocol	Playwright's direct CDP transport
Your tests	-	Identical. Only the base class changes.

The best part: there's nothing to learn. You keep your test suite, your @dusk selectors, your loginAs(), your CI artifact paths. You delete the ChromeDriver plumbing and get a faster, less flaky run for free. → Read the full rationale

Migrate in 3 steps

# 1. Swap the package
composer remove laravel/dusk
composer require --dev gawrys/dawn
vendor/bin/playwright-install --browsers

  // 2. tests/DuskTestCase.php - swap the base class, drop the WebDriver plumbing
- use Laravel\Dusk\TestCase as BaseTestCase;
+ use Dawn\TestCase as BaseTestCase;

# 3. Run it
php artisan test --testsuite=Browser

Test classes that use Laravel\Dusk\Browser; for closure type-hints keep working as-is - when laravel/dusk is absent, Dawn aliases that class name automatically. Full walkthrough in the migration guide.

Installation

composer require --dev gawrys/dawn
vendor/bin/playwright-install --browsers

Requirements: PHP 8.2+ · Laravel 10, 11 or 12 · Node.js 20+ (runs the Playwright engine).

Dawn\DawnServiceProvider is auto-discovered and registers the environment-gated /_dawn/login, /_dawn/logout and /_dawn/user routes that power loginAs() / logout() / assertAuthenticated() - the same out-of-process mechanism Dusk uses, never registered in production.

Configuration

Env var	Default	Meaning
`DAWN_BROWSER`	`chromium`	`chromium`, `firefox` or `webkit`
`DAWN_HEADLESS`	`true`	Set `false` to watch the browser

Base URL comes from config('app.url') / APP_URL, exactly like Dusk. Failure screenshots and console logs land in tests/Browser/screenshots and tests/Browser/console - the same paths as Dusk, so existing CI artifact globs keep working.

Databases

DatabaseMigrations and DatabaseTruncation work unchanged. RefreshDatabase cannot work - the browser talks to your app over HTTP in another process - so Dawn fails fast with a clear message instead of letting your suite fail mysteriously.

Compatibility

The full method-by-method table lives in COMPATIBILITY.md. Anything not yet implemented throws a typed Dawn\Exceptions\UnsupportedDuskMethod naming the method and linking to the table - Dawn never approximates silently.

Dawn's own suite includes an acceptance class whose test bodies are byte-identical Dusk tests (including bodies ported from laravel/dusk's own repository), plus URL-assertion and selector-formatting cases ported verbatim from Dusk's unit suite.

Roadmap

As of v0.2.0 Dawn covers ~95% of the Dusk Browser API (see the badge — it's measured automatically against the current upstream Dusk). The only unsupported methods are the ones that genuinely can't map onto the stack — OS-window maximize()/move(), interactive tinker()/stop(), and JavaScript dialogs (an engine deadlock, explained in COMPATIBILITY.md).

Out of scope by design: multi-browser matrix configuration, visual regression, device emulation, a Pest bridge.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome - see CONTRIBUTING.md. The golden rules: no WebDriver, no PHP-side waiting (CI-enforced), and Dusk's behaviour is the spec.

License

MIT. Dawn is not affiliated with or endorsed by Laravel; "Dusk" refers to the laravel/dusk package whose public API Dawn reimplements.

gawrys / dawn

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