Automation using Robot Framework

4 min readAug 7, 2019

A lot more to discuss Robot Framework, but here I am trying to highlight only the important topics for future deep dive.

Robot Framework is a Python-based, extensible keyword-driven automation framework for acceptance testing, acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), behavior-driven development (BDD) and robotic process automation (RPA)

It has simple plain text syntax and it can be extended easily with libraries implemented using Python or Java and it utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach

Architecture

What is Test Libraries?

Test libraries contain lowest-level keywords, often called library keywords, which actually interact with the system under test.

Standard Library

The test libraries are used across the Robot Framework. The BuiltIn library important, a set of generic keywords needed often. It is imported automatically and thus always available.
http://robotframework.org/robotframework/latest/libraries/BuiltIn.html

Other standard libraries need to be imported like other libraries, but there is no install them.

External Library

Custom libraries can be implemented based on requirements specific. Example: SeleniumLibrary and SwingLibrary

Remote Library

Test Libraries in one machine and Robot Framework running in another machine.

Test library APIs

Three different test library APIs

Static API

Methods which map directly to the keyword names. Keywords also take the same arguments as the method implemented.

The Robot Framework uses reflection to find out what public methods the library class or module contains.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/inspect.html

def greet(name):
    print 'Hello %s!' % name

Dynamic API

The class that implements a method to get the names of the keywords they implement, and another method to execute a named keyword with given arguments.

Robot Framework discovers what keywords a library implements, what arguments and documentation these keywords have, and how the keywords are actually executed

One of the benefits of the dynamic API is that you have more flexibility in organizing your library. With the static API, you must have all keywords in one class or module, whereas with the dynamic API, you can, for example, implement each keyword as a separate class

https://github.com/robotframework/PythonLibCore/blob/master/src/robotlibcore.py

http://robotframework.org/robotframework/latest/RobotFrameworkUserGuide.html#dynamic-library-api

Hybrid API

A hybrid between the static API and the dynamic API. When implementing a test library in Python, the hybrid API has the same dynamic capabilities as the actual dynamic API. A great benefit with it is that there is no need to have special methods for getting keyword arguments and documentation.

Example: Telnet library

http://robotframework.org/robotframework/latest/RobotFrameworkUserGuide.html#hybrid-library-api

Test Tools

Libdoc

Tool for generating keyword documentation for test libraries and resource files in HTML and XML formats

python -m robot.libdoc TestSystem TestSystem.html

Testdoc

Tool for generating high-level documentation based on test cases.

python -m robot.testdoc my_test.robot testdoc.html

Tidy

Tool for cleaning up and changing the format of Robot Framework test data files.

python -m robot.tidy messed_up_tests.robot cleaned_up_tests.robot

Rebot

Tool for generating logs and reports based on XML outputs and for combining multiple outputs together.

Test Data

*** Settings ***
Documentation     A test suite with a single test for valid login.
...
...               This test has a workflow that is created using keywords in
...               the imported resource file.
Resource          resource.robot

*** Test Cases ***
Valid Login
    Open Browser To Login Page
    Input Username    demo
    Input Password    mode
    Submit Credentials
    Welcome Page Should Be Open
    [Teardown]    Close Browser

Settings

Importing test libraries, resource files and variable files.

Defining metadata for test suites and test cases.

Variables

Defining variables that can be used elsewhere in the test data.

Test Cases

Creating test cases from available keywords.

Tasks

Creating tasks using available keywords. A single file can only contain either test cases or tasks.

Keywords

Creating user keywords from existing lower-level keywords

Comments

Additional comments or data. Ignored by Robot Framework.

Reference:

https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo
https://robotframework.org/#documentation
https://github.com/robotframework/HowToWriteGoodTestCases
https://github.com/robotframework/PythonLibCore https://github.com/robotframework/IntroSlides