==================== Robot Framework Demo

Robot Framework_ is a generic open source test automation framework. In addition to introducing Robot Framework test data syntax, this demo shows how to execute test cases, how generated reports and logs look like, and how to extend the framework with custom test libraries.

.. contents:: Contents: :depth: 1 :local:

Downloading demo package

To get the demo, you can either download_ and extract the latest package from the GitHub or checkout the source code_ directly. As a result you get RobotDemo directory with several files.

Example test cases, test library used by them, and generated results_ are available also online. Therefore, you do not need to download the demo if you are not interested in running it__ yourself.

__ running demo_

Demo application

The demo application is a very simple calculator implemented with Python (calculator.py_). It contains only business logic and no user interface. You cannot really run the calculator manually.

Test cases

The demo contains three different test case files illustrating three different approaches for creating test cases with Robot Framework. Click file names below to see the latest versions online.

keyword_driven.robot_ Example test cases using the keyword-driven testing approach.

All tests contain a workflow constructed from keywords in
`CalculatorLibrary.py`_. Creating new tests or editing
existing is easy even for people without programming skills.

The *keyword-driven* approach works well for normal test
automation, but the *gherkin* style might be even better
if also business people need to understand tests. If the
same workflow needs to repeated multiple times, it is best
to use to the *data-driven* approach.

data_driven.robot_ Example test cases using the data-driven testing approach.

The *data-driven* style works well when you need to repeat
the same workflow multiple times.

Tests use ``Calculate`` keyword created in this file, that in
turn uses keywords in `CalculatorLibrary.py`_. An exception
is the last test that has a custom *template keyword*.

gherkin.robot_ Example test case using the gherkin syntax.

This test has a workflow similar to the *keyword-driven*
examples. The difference is that the keywords use higher
abstraction level and their arguments are embedded into
the keyword names.

This kind of *gherkin* syntax has been made popular by Cucumber_.
It works well especially when tests act as examples that need to
be easily understood also by the business people.

As you can see, creating test cases with Robot Framework is very easy. See Robot Framework User Guide_ for details about the test data syntax.

Test library

All test cases interact with the calculator using a custom test library named CalculatorLibrary.py_. In practice the library is just a Python class with methods that create the keywords used by the test cases.

Generated library documentation makes it easy to see what keywords the library provides. This documentation is created with Libdoc_ tool integrated with the framework:

• CalculatorLibrary.html_

As you can see, Robot Framework's test library API is very simple. See Robot Framework User Guide_ for more information about creating test libraries, using Libdoc, and so on.

Generated results

After running tests_, you will get report and log in HTML format. Example files are also visible online in case you are not interested in running the demo yourself. Notice that one of the test has failed on purpose to show how failures look like.

• report.html_
• log.html_

Running demo

Preconditions

A precondition for running the tests is having Robot Framework_ installed. It is most commonly used on Python_ but it works also with Jython_ (JVM) and IronPython_ (.NET). Robot Framework installation instructions_ cover installation procedure in detail. People already familiar with installing Python packages and having pip_ package manager installed, can simply run the following command::

pip install robotframework

Robot Framework 3.0 and newer support Python 3 in addition to Python 2. Also this demo project is nowadays Python 3 compatible.

Running tests

Test cases are executed with the robot command::

robot keyword_driven.robot

.. note:: If you are using Robot Framework 2.9 or earlier, you need to use Python interpreter specific command pybot, jybot or ipybot instead.

To execute all test case files in a directory recursively, just give the directory as an argument. You can also give multiple files or directories in one go and use various command line options supported by Robot Framework. The results available online__ were created using the following command::

robot --name Robot --loglevel DEBUG keyword_driven.robot data_driven.robot gherkin.robot

Run robot --help for more information about the command line usage and see Robot Framework User Guide_ for more details about test execution in general.

__ Generated results_

.. _Robot Framework: http://robotframework.org .. _download: https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo/archive/master.zip .. _source code: https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo.git .. _calculator.py: https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo/blob/master/calculator.py .. _keyword_driven.robot: https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo/blob/master/keyword_driven.robot .. _CalculatorLibrary.py: https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo/blob/master/CalculatorLibrary.py .. _data_driven.robot: https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo/blob/master/data_driven.robot .. _gherkin.robot: https://github.com/robotframework/RobotDemo/blob/master/gherkin.robot .. _Cucumber: https://cucumber.io/ .. _Robot Framework User Guide: http://robotframework.org/robotframework/#user-guide .. _Python: http://python.org .. _Jython: http://jython.org .. _IronPython: http://ironpython.net .. _pip: http://pip-installer.org .. _installation instructions: https://github.com/robotframework/robotframework/blob/master/INSTALL.rst .. _Libdoc: http://robotframework.org/robotframework/#built-in-tools .. _CalculatorLibrary.html: http://robotframework.org/RobotDemo/CalculatorLibrary.html .. _report.html: http://robotframework.org/RobotDemo/report.html .. _log.html: http://robotframework.org/RobotDemo/log.html