Python Robot testing

A robot python mimics what human testers do manually (to entertain real developers)

Overview

Installation
Disadvantages
Architecture
Introductions
Social
Robot Framework Install
Scripting
- Robot QuickStart Login Demo script
Run scripts
References
More on IoT

This article talks about the Robot Framework (RF) open-sourced at https://github.com/robotframework and described at http://robotframework.org

RF repeats a sequence of keystrokes and mouse clicks that you specify.

It is used to test software by applying (Acceptance Test Driven Development) approaches that looks for screens and fields before the app is developed.

It is also used as the base for “Robotic Process Automation” to help people do work.

There are many products and frameworks which do that. Selenium works on web browsers. FitNesse, Cucumber, HP QTP (‘Unified Functional Testing’ or ‘UFT’).

Installation

The Robot Framework (RF) is written in the Python language, so it installs with this command:

pip install robotframework-ride

https://github.com/robotframework/QuickStartGuide/blob/master/QuickStart.rst

This can be done on any OS that runs the Python interpreter: Windows, OS X, Linux.

NOTE: Through a Remote Library Interface, RF can run (but slower) on IronPython or Jython when automating on a Java application or implementing a custom RF test library in Java.

Consequently, RF can be used with non-Python libraries such as the Java JDBC Database Library by running RF on Jython. The Jython interpreter not only compiles the RF Python code into Java bytecode for execution within a JVM, but also allows for the importing of Java classes (such as those of the Database Library) as (if they were) Python modules. See http://blog.xebia.com/the-robot-framework-remote-library-interface-using-the-remote-database-library-to-connect-to-ibm-db2/

Additionally, install the Robot IDE (RIDE):

pip install robotframework-ride

Also, install the documentation utility:

pip install docutils

Disadvantages

RF is written to be a “keyword-driven”, using the human-readable “Gherkin” syntax.

So one does need to memorize some keywords in order to be efficient at it.

Instead of coding programming code, it’s faster to write keyword-driven syntax driven by text data files.

The Robot IDE (RIDE) requires a 32-bit Python version on MacOS and does not yet support Python 3.

Architecture

The Robot Framework (RF)’s components are typical of most other test automation frameworks:

python-robot-400x492-37552

Green boxes signifies Robot framework utility components whereas grey refers to app-specific components or artefacts, such as test code and product code, that are to be created by the development organization. The numbers indicate the order in which a typical test execution run would flow.

Introductions

generic, keyword- and data-driven test automation framework for acceptance test driven development (ATDD).

http://blog.xebia.com/tag/robot-framework/ by Michael Hallik
http://blog.xebia.com/robot-framework-the-unsung-hero-of-test-automation/
http://blog.xebia.com/robot-framework-and-the-keyword-driven-approach-to-test-automation-part-1-of-3/
http://blog.xebia.com/robot-framework-and-the-keyword-driven-approach-to-test-automation-part-2-of-3/
http://blog.xebia.com/running-robot-frameworks-remote-server-as-java-agent/ by Serge Beaumont September 14th, 2016

@robotframework on Twitter.

RF is maintained by IT contractor Pekka Klärck (@pekkaklarck, http://eliga.fi/) See Pekka on Joe’s video using this slidedeck. Note it’s copyrighted by Nokia Networks (Finland).

https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2016/12/robot-framework-tutorial-2016-working-with-collections/

https://medium.com/@varjoinen/robot-framework-101-fb12d1d6954c#.jejc3hrwl

Robot Framework Install

The core framework is operating system and application independent because it’s implemented using Python for running on Jython (JVM) and IronPython (.NET).

See https://github.com/robotframework/QuickStartGuide/blob/master/QuickStart.rst

Install the Robot Framework core:

pip install robotframework

The response:

Collecting robotframework
  Downloading robotframework-3.0.tar.gz (430kB)
 100% |████████████████████████████████| 440kB 399kB/s 
Building wheels for collected packages: robotframework
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for robotframework ... done
  Stored in directory: /Users/mac/Library/Caches/pip/wheels/9e/61/ee/b4bb4b9b7824594cc785a577975bec2fce9c54b09bbf39eb3f
Successfully built robotframework
Installing collected packages: robotframework
Successfully installed robotframework-3.0

To test databases and for example REST APIs, also install:

pip install robotframework-databaselibrary
pip install requests
pip install botframework-requests

PROTIP: I don’t recommend installing docutils because you can look it up online.
- Click View about Standard Libraries and Built-in Tools

To install the demo Robot login script, create a folder to hold the demo repo:

cd ~/gits/wilsonmar/pattern-recognition
git clone https://github.com/robotframework/QuickStartGuide.git --depth=1
cd QuickStartGuide

Position your present working directory to thePROTIP: I don’t recommend installing docutils because you can look it up online.

Run the demo:

robot QuickStart.rst

NOTE: The file name extension (ending) .rst is also used by Ansible scripts.

You will see this if the .rst file is not in the present folder:

[ ERROR ] Parsing 'QuickStart.rst' failed: Data source does not exist.

The expected response is:

==============================================================================
QuickStart                                                                    
==============================================================================
User can create an account and log in                                 | PASS |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
User cannot log in with bad password                                  | PASS |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
User can change password                                              | PASS |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Invalid password                                                      | PASS |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
User status is stored in database                                     | PASS |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QuickStart                                                            | PASS |
5 critical tests, 5 passed, 0 failed
5 tests total, 5 passed, 0 failed
==============================================================================
Output:  /Users/mac/gits/wilsonmar/pattern-recognition/QuickStartGuide/output.xml
Log:     /Users/mac/gits/wilsonmar/pattern-recognition/QuickStartGuide/log.html
Report:  /Users/mac/gits/wilsonmar/pattern-recognition/QuickStartGuide/report.html

Scripting

Many of the functions are common to other similar programs, such as Selenium, HP QTP, etc.

But there are plugins for IntelliJ/PyCharm & Eclipse, Atom, Sublime, TextMate, Vim, etc.

See http://sikulix-2014.readthedocs.io/en/latest/scenarios.html#using-robotframework

http://www.slideshare.net/pekkaklarck/robot-framework-introduction

Run scripts

http://sikulix-2014.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq/010-command-line.html#how-to-run-sikulix-from-command-line

robot some_tests.robot OR robot test_cases/

References

https://www.slideshare.net/pekkaklarck/robot-framework-introduction

More on IoT

This is one of a series on IoT:

NOTE: Pages about GE’s Predix have been removed.

This is one of a series on Python:

Wilson Mar