expect(value).toMatchSnapshot() deprecation announcement on V1.38

[ofirpardo-artlist]

Just saw this deprecation announcement on V1.38:
https://playwright.dev/docs/release-notes#deprecations

• The method expect(value).toMatchSnapshot() is deprecated in favor of expect(page).toHaveScreenshot() and expect(locator).toHaveScreenshot().

I don't understand the reasoning behind this, not sure if you're aware of this but this method can be used for any snapshot required and not only screenshots, therefore for my use case I cannot replace toMatchSnapshot with toHaveScreenshot since I don't verify a screenshot but a buffer.
I know many others that use this in a similar way, and I know that deprecation doesn't mean it's removed, but I want to raise it now before it could be removed in the future.

The fact that this method can be replaced with toHaveScreenshot for some cases doesn't mean it should be and having it as deprecated, or worse removing it is an incorrect lose of useful functionality.
Please reconsider this. Thanks.

[pavelfeldman]

Release notes are wrong, they should say "for images". toMatchSnapshot for strings and buffers is still there and is not marked as deprecated in api and in the docs. Thanks for spotting it.

I stand corrected, we did deprecate it in the API, this will be reverted in v1.38.1. Golden testing should still be possible with toMatchSnapshot.

[aslushnikov]

@ofirpardo-artlist out of curiosity, what kind of data do you have in your buffers? Are these not images?

[joshualoehr-smar]

@aslushnikov not OP but I just recently wrote a test that uses .toMatchSnapshot to verify a downloaded PNG that is generated client side. It's an image but not one that comes from screenshotting the page.