Hooks

This page covers using Global Cache from Playwright's beforeAll and beforeEach setup hooks. In both hooks, the cached value is created once and shared across all tests and workers. The value is reused even in fully parallel mode and when Playwright starts a new worker after a test failure.

The hook itself still follows Playwright's normal lifecycle, so choose between beforeAll and beforeEach based on the fixture scope you need and when the cached value should be assigned.

Do not use afterAll / afterEach to remove shared cached resources. Those hooks can clear teh value while another worker still needs the resource. Follow the dedicated Cleanup flow instead.

beforeAll

Playwright runs beforeAll once per worker process, not necessarily once for the whole test run. Wrap the expensive part with Global Cache when every worker should reuse one result:

import { test } from '@playwright/test';
import { globalCache } from '@global-cache/playwright';
import { database } from './database';

let userId: string;

test.beforeAll(async () => {
  userId = await globalCache.get('seeded-user-id', async () => {
    const user = await database.createUser();
    return user.id;
  });
});

If a failed test causes Playwright to create another worker, the new worker calls beforeAll again but receives the cached user ID without creating another database record.

beforeAll can use worker-scoped fixtures, but not test-scoped fixtures.

beforeEach

Use beforeEach when setup needs a test-scoped fixture. In this example, database is a custom test-scoped fixture:

import { test } from './fixtures';
import { globalCache } from '@global-cache/playwright';

let userId: string;

test.beforeEach(async ({ database }) => {
  userId = await globalCache.get('seeded-user-id', async () => {
    const user = await database.createUser();
    return user.id;
  });
});

test('opens user profile', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto(`/users/${userId}/profile`);
});

beforeEach runs before every test, but the cached computation still runs only once. Every test and worker receives the same userId, while the hook remains free to use test-scoped fixtures.

View the runnable beforeAll example.