Needle vs Playwright comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Needle and Playwright?

	Needle http://needle.spree.de/	Playwright https://playwright.dev
Programming language	Java	JavaScript
Category	Unit Testing	End-to-End Testing
General info	Needle is a lightweight framework for testing Java EE components outside of the container in isolation Needle reduces the test setup code by analysing dependencies and has automatic injection of mock objects by default. Therefore It will maximize the speed of development as well as the execution of unit tests	Test across all modern browsers. Use in your preferred language. Single API to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. Use the Playwright API in JavaScript & TypeScript, Python, .NET and, Java.
xUnit Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.	No	Yes While using xUnit is supported, it does not support running parallel tests. https://playwright.dev/dotnet/docs/test-runners/#xunit-support
Client-side Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser	Yes You can test front-end components and functionality by testing individual front-end classes and functions	Yes Test on Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. Playwright has full API coverage for all modern browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (with Chromium), Apple Safari (with WebKit) and Mozilla Firefox. Cross-platform WebKit testing. With Playwright, test how your app behaves in Apple Safari with WebKit builds for Windows, Linux and macOS. Test locally and on CI. Test for mobile. Use device emulation to test your responsive web apps in mobile web browsers. Headless and headed. Playwright supports headless (without browser UI) and headed (with browser UI) modes for all browsers and all platforms. Headed is great for debugging, and headless is faster and suited for CI/cloud executions.
Server-side Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code	Yes You can test back-end components and functionality.one of needles features is database testing via a JPA (Java Persistence API) like hibernate	Yes While running tests inside browsers you may want to make calls to the HTTP API of your application. It may be helpful if you need to prepare server state before running a test or to check some postconditions on the server after performing some actions in the browser. All of that could be achieved via APIRequestContext methods.
Fixtures Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test	Yes It has setUp() and tearDown() functions which are mostly used to execute database operations	Yes Playwright Test is based on the concept of the test fixtures. Test fixtures are used to establish environment for each test, giving the test everything it needs and nothing else. Test fixtures are isolated between tests, which gives Playwright Test following benefits: Playwright Test runs tests in parallel by default, making your test suite much faster; Playwright Test can efficiently retry the flaky failures, instead of re-running the whole suite; You can group tests based on their meaning, instead of their common setup. Learn more at https://playwright.dev/docs/test-fixtures
Group fixtures Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data for a group of tests (group-fixtures). This ensures specific environment for a given group of tests.	Yes The setUp() and tearDown functions can be used to define an environment for a group of tests	Yes You can group tests based on their meaning, instead of their common setup.
Generators Supports data generators for tests. Data generators generate input data for test. The test is then run for each input data produced in this way.	N/A	Yes Playwright comes with the ability to generate tests out of the box. Generate tests; Preserve authenticated state; Record using custom setup; Emulate devices; Emulate color scheme and viewport size; Emulate geolocation, language and timezone. Learn more at https://playwright.dev/docs/codegen/
Licence Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software	GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1	Apache License 2.0
Mocks Mocks are objects that simulate the behavior of real objects. Using mocks allows testing some part of the code in isolation (with other parts mocked when needed)	Yes One of needle's features is automatic injection of mock objects, it supports EasyMock and Mockito out of the box	Yes Playwright introduces context-wide network interception to stub and mock network requests. You can mock API endpoints via handling the network quests in your Playwright script. Learn more at https://playwright.dev/docs/network/#handle-requests
Grouping Allows organizing tests in groups	N/A	Yes You can group tests to give them a logical name or to scope before/after hooks to the group.
Other Other useful information about the testing framework		You can use the Playwright API in JavaScript & TypeScript, Python, .NET and, Java.