Tools: Designing a Parallel-Safe Enterprise Automation Framework with Playwright and JUnit 5

🧱 Architecture Overview ## Guiding Principles ## 📐 High-Level Architecture Diagram ## 📁 Project Structure ## Why This Structure Works ## 🔄 Execution Lifecycle (Parallel-Safe Design) ## Why BrowserContext? ## 🧠 Core Design Decisions ## 1️⃣ Page Object Model (POM) ## 2️⃣ Test Data Strategy ## 3️⃣ Flakiness Prevention ## 4️⃣ CI/CD Integration ## ⚡ Parallel Execution Strategy ## 🚀 What Makes This Enterprise-Ready? ## 🏁 Final Thoughts Modern software delivery is fast, distributed, and CI/CD driven. In that environment, simple UI test scripts are not enough. Without structure, isolation, and scalability, automation quickly becomes flaky, slow, and unmaintainable. Modern automation frameworks must do more than execute UI tests. This article outlines the design of a clean, enterprise-grade automation framework built using: This framework follows clear separation of concerns and layered design principles. This structure allows independent scaling of UI, API, and database validation layers. This layout supports long-term maintainability and team collaboration. This design balances performance and isolation. This improves readability and reduces maintenance overhead. Test data is externalized using JSON: Loaded via a dedicated utility class. While building this framework, one of the most important lessons was this: Negative assertions are deceptively hard. Verifying that something no longer exists in the UI requires careful synchronization. Without deterministic waiting strategies, tests may pass locally and fail in CI. Designing for reliability requires: This experience reinforced an important truth: Automation reliability is primarily an architecture problem — not a tooling problem. Common sources of flaky tests: Instead of hard coded waits like: This significantly reduces nondeterministic failures. Headless mode is automatically enabled in CI environments: No environment-specific modifications required. ✔ No static Page or Browser instances ✔ Context closed after every test ✔ Unique test data per execution ✔ No shared mutable state This ensures consistent behavior across local and pipeline runs. This framework is designed not as a collection of test scripts, but as a scalable automation platform. Automation maturity is not about writing more tests. Automation maturity is not about writing more tests. It is about building systems that are scalable, can be executed in parallel, and reliable in CI/CD pipelines. A well-designed automation framework is infrastructure, not just test code. View GitHub Repository Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse CODE_BLOCK: ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ CI/CD Layer │ │ (GitHub Actions / etc.) │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Test Layer │ │ UI | API | Database │ │ (JUnit 5 Test Classes) │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Base Test Layer │ │ Browser Lifecycle Mgmt │ │ Context Isolation │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬ ▼ ▼ ▼ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ │ UI Layer │ │ API Layer │ │ Database Layer│ │ Page Objects │ │ API Clients │ │ Repositories │ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Application Under Test │ └──────────────────────────┘ Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ CI/CD Layer │ │ (GitHub Actions / etc.) │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Test Layer │ │ UI | API | Database │ │ (JUnit 5 Test Classes) │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Base Test Layer │ │ Browser Lifecycle Mgmt │ │ Context Isolation │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬ ▼ ▼ ▼ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ │ UI Layer │ │ API Layer │ │ Database Layer│ │ Page Objects │ │ API Clients │ │ Repositories │ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Application Under Test │ └──────────────────────────┘ CODE_BLOCK: ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ CI/CD Layer │ │ (GitHub Actions / etc.) │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Test Layer │ │ UI | API | Database │ │ (JUnit 5 Test Classes) │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Base Test Layer │ │ Browser Lifecycle Mgmt │ │ Context Isolation │ └─────────────┬────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬ ▼ ▼ ▼ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ │ UI Layer │ │ API Layer │ │ Database Layer│ │ Page Objects │ │ API Clients │ │ Repositories │ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ Application Under Test │ └──────────────────────────┘ CODE_BLOCK: sdet-enterprise-automation-framework │ ├── src │ ├── main │ │ └── com/company/automation/ │ │ ├── config │ │ ├── pages │ │ ├── api │ │ └── utilities │ │ │ └── test │ └── com/company/automation/ │ ├── base │ ├── models │ ├── utils │ └── tests │ ├── ui │ ├── api │ └── database │ ├── .github/workflows └── pom.xml Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: sdet-enterprise-automation-framework │ ├── src │ ├── main │ │ └── com/company/automation/ │ │ ├── config │ │ ├── pages │ │ ├── api │ │ └── utilities │ │ │ └── test │ └── com/company/automation/ │ ├── base │ ├── models │ ├── utils │ └── tests │ ├── ui │ ├── api │ └── database │ ├── .github/workflows └── pom.xml CODE_BLOCK: sdet-enterprise-automation-framework │ ├── src │ ├── main │ │ └── com/company/automation/ │ │ ├── config │ │ ├── pages │ │ ├── api │ │ └── utilities │ │ │ └── test │ └── com/company/automation/ │ ├── base │ ├── models │ ├── utils │ └── tests │ ├── ui │ ├── api │ └── database │ ├── .github/workflows └── pom.xml CODE_BLOCK: loginPage.login(username, password); Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: loginPage.login(username, password); CODE_BLOCK: loginPage.login(username, password); CODE_BLOCK: page.locator("input").fill(...) Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: page.locator("input").fill(...) CODE_BLOCK: page.locator("input").fill(...) CODE_BLOCK: src/test/resources/testdata/loginData.json Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: src/test/resources/testdata/loginData.json CODE_BLOCK: src/test/resources/testdata/loginData.json CODE_BLOCK: Thread.sleep(5000); Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: Thread.sleep(5000); CODE_BLOCK: Thread.sleep(5000); CODE_BLOCK: boolean isCI = System.getenv("CI") != null; Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: boolean isCI = System.getenv("CI") != null; CODE_BLOCK: boolean isCI = System.getenv("CI") != null; - Parallel-safe - Maintainable - CI/CD ready - Extensible to API and database validation - Playwright (Java) - Page Object Model (POM) - Parallel execution - CI/CD integration - UI automation - API automation (extensible structure) - Database validation (future-ready) - Parallel test execution - Externalized test data - CI/CD pipeline integration - Isolation – Each test runs in its own BrowserContext - Scalability – Clear package layering for expansion - Maintainability – Page Objects separate UI from logic - Parallel Safety – No shared mutable state - CI-Ready – Automatic headless execution in pipelines - Neutral namespace com.company.automation - Clean separation between framework code and test implementations - Dedicated API and database extension points - Test data isolated under resources - @BeforeAll → Launch Browser - @BeforeEach → Create BrowserContext - Test Runs → Isolated Session - @AfterEach → Close BrowserContext - @AfterAll → Close Browser - Each test gets a fresh session: - No cookie contamination - No shared authentication state - Safe parallel execution - Faster than launching a browser per test - Encapsulates locators - Encapsulates actions - Exposes business-level methods - Data-driven testing - Cleaner test methods - Easy scenario expansion - Reduced hardcoding - Avoiding static waits - Waiting for navigation and UI stabilization - Using clear visual state indicators (e.g., “No Records Found”) - Asynchronous UI updates - Negative assertions - Static waits - waitForURL() - waitForLoadState() - Deterministic UI markers - Playwright’s built-in auto-waiting - GitHub Actions - Azure DevOps - Layered architecture - Context isolation strategy - Parallel-safe execution - Clean namespace structure - CI-ready configuration - Extensible API and DB layers - Externalized test data - Flakiness mitigation strategy - Designing for concurrency - Eliminating flakiness - Enforcing isolation - Structuring for growth - Preparing for CI/CD scalability