[FAQ] #487

Course

ai-dev-tools-zoomcamp

Question

Why does a Playwright security test return HTTP 403 instead of the expected HTTP 404 when using Vite rather than production Nginx?

Answer

During my AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp 2026 final project, AI OfficeFlow, I encountered a browser-testing issue caused by differences between the development and production environments.

Problem: The production frontend used Nginx to block access to private routes with HTTP 404. However, the Cloud test environment used Vite, which forwarded certain requests to the API and returned HTTP 403.

As a result, 14 out of 15 browser tests passed, while one security assertion failed.

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