Test meta tags with playwright

Question

I want to test meta tags of the web application in Playwright, but I haven't found any info in the official documentation. Can somebody advise me with meta data testing?

For example, I have tried to test: <meta name="description" content="something">

test("Meta data", async ({ page }) => {
         await page.goto(env.baseUrl)
         const metaDescription = page.locator('meta [name="description"]')
         await expect(metaDescription).toHaveText("something")
})

and the result is:

• The received string is ""
• waiting for selector 'meta [name="description"]'

What is wrong and how to test it in the right way?

Answer 1

Your locator selector is matching nothing. meta [name="description"] targets elements inside a meta element with the attribute name="description". To target the meta element itself you have to use meta[name="description"] (note the removed space).

Additionally, the meta element holds the text in the content attribute. That's why toHaveText can't work. Try toHaveAttribute instead.

Here's the fixed version:

const { test, expect } = require('@playwright/test');
    
test('basic test', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('https://your-site.com');
  const metaDescription = page.locator('meta[name="description"]');
  await expect(metaDescription).toHaveAttribute('content', 'something')
});