[Question]: How to set up a custom driver path? (Does not work with ASP.NET 4.8)

Your question

Hi, I use the Playwright 1.16.1 with an ASP.NET NET Application (.NET Framework 4.8) on the WIndows machine. I would like to ship my application together with the next entities in the App_Data folder:

1. A bundled browser - OK. I can set up a custom path via ExecutablePath of the BrowserTypeLaunchOptions class.
2. Playwright driver - I don’t see a needed API that allows me to set up a custom path for the Playwright driver (the .playwright folder).

Question: How to have a custom path for the .playwright folder?

What I tried: I see the BrowserTypeLaunchOptions class also contains the Env key-value property. I’ve tried to add the PLAYWRIGHT_DRIVER_PATH key with a custom path value but looks like it doesn’t work.

Problem and what I can see: I have debugged the Playwright tool itself and discovered the next things:

The responsible class for the driver path is Microsoft.Playwright.Helpers.Patch which has the GetExecutablePath method. Please check the code with the 1-4 comments below:

internal static class Paths
    {
        internal static string GetExecutablePath()
        {
            //1 - The AppContexts.BaseDirectory for me is the root of the ASP.NET solution, at this level I can see the App_Data, bin folders etc.
            DirectoryInfo assemblyDirectory = new(AppContext.BaseDirectory);
            //2 - then there is a check which looking for the Microsoft.Playwright.dll at the previously mentioned path, but there is no such Playwright dll, because it's under the bin folder.
            if (!assemblyDirectory.Exists || !File.Exists(Path.Combine(assemblyDirectory.FullName, "Microsoft.Playwright.dll")))
            {
                //3 - the dll haven't found at the root of website and now code looking for the type. 
                //The type was found under the Temporary ASP.NET Files (the path is: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\13163ddd\37e5e286\assembly\dl3\.playwright\node).
                var assemblyLocation = typeof(Playwright).Assembly.Location;
                //4 - then the rest of the code relies on the assemblyDirectory variable which is the Temporary ASP.NET Files.
                // If manually add the .playwright folder there, my application works but I would like to avoid manually put the driver here.
                assemblyDirectory = new FileInfo(assemblyLocation).Directory;
            }

            string executableFile = GetPath(assemblyDirectory.FullName);
            if (File.Exists(executableFile))
            {
                return executableFile;
            }

            // if the above fails, we can assume we're in the nuget registry
            executableFile = GetPath(assemblyDirectory.Parent.Parent.FullName);
            if (File.Exists(executableFile))
            {
                return executableFile;
            }

            throw new PlaywrightException($"Driver not found: {executableFile}");
        }

Should this class be more flexible? Is there any other approach that I don’t see? Thank you in advance! 😃 Please let me know if I should clarify something more.