Frameworks for all types of software must be known to everyone in this field. The field of robots is extremely advantageous in real life until a limit. Here is all about robotics framework.
Definition
Robot Framework is an open-source test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development. It follows different test case styles − keyword-driven, behaviour-driven and data-driven for writing test cases. The Robot Framework supports external libraries and open-source tools for automation, and developers most often use the Selenium Library for web development and UI testing.
Keywords
Robot framework comes with built-in keywords available with robot framework, keywords available from the libraries like Selenium Library (open browser, close browser, maximize browser, etc.). We can also create user-defined keywords by combining other user-defined keywords, built-in keywords, or library keywords, and we can pass arguments to them, making them reusable like functions.
Libraries
Robot framework has support for a lot of external libraries like SeleniumLibrary, Database Library, FTP Library and http library. SeleniumLibrary is mostly used as it helps to interact with the browsers and helps with web application and UI testing. Robot framework also has its own built-in libraries for strings, date, numbers etc
Resources
Robot framework also allows the import of robot files with keywords externally to be used with test cases. Resources are very easy to use and are of great help when we need to use some keywords already written for other test projects. Robot framework supports keyword driven style test cases and data driven style.
Reports
Robot framework provides all the details of test suite, test case execution in the form of report and logs. All the execution details of the test case are available in the log file. The details like whether the test case has failed or passed, time taken for execution, steps followed to run the test case are provided.
RIDE
This editor available with Robot framework helps in writing and running test cases. The editor is very easy to install and use. RIDE makes life easy for writing test cases by providing framework specific code completion, syntax highlighting, etc. The editor easily lets you create a project, test suite, test case, keywords, and variables, import libraries, execute tests, and tag test cases. Robot framework also provides plugins for eclipse, sublime, Textmate, Pycharm that has support for robot test cases.
Benefits & Disadvantages
- It is very easy to install and helps in creating and executing test cases. A newcomer can easily understand the Robot Framework and does not need high-level testing knowledge to get started.
- It supports keyword-driven, behaviour-driven and data-driven style of writing test cases.
- It is a good support for external libraries. Most used is Selenium Library, which is easy to install and use in robot framework.
- Robot lacks support for if-else, nested loops, which are required when the code gets complex.
The test cases in Robotics Framework are based on keywords written in tabular format, which makes it clear and readable, and conveys the right information about the intention of the test case.
