Introduction to Robot Framework

Welcome to the testing world. In this session, we are going to understand what is robot framework. So first we are going to cover robot framework introduction. Then I will show you how robot framework is different from other automation tools. Like if you talk about selenium, if you talk about so how it's different. And then I'll move to why robot framework is so popular means what all the advantages we are going to get with robot framework. So first of all, what is robot framework? So robot framework is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing. Now question here is why acceptance testing? Why not for system testing here? In acceptance testing, we assume mostly business users are involved and they are not very much aware about the programming. So they want a kind of tool in which they can test or they can automate their testing without using much programming skills and that is the recipe of this robot framework. You can take it robot framework as a automation tool or later on we will understand it's not a tool, it's a library. But as of now, we can understand it as a tool which is going to provide us environment in which we can automate application even without programming or somewhere you required programming. So it will be very minimal programming. So it's a generic test automation tool for acceptance testing. Before moving forward, I'll just give you a very basic introduction how robot framework code looks like. So I'll just scroll down and here I have taken the code of robot framework and same code in selenium. So if you check it here in robot framework, we are not writing code in any programming. We are just using the predefined keywords. Like we have a keyword input username here we need to pass where and what input you want to pass. So if you check it, that is not a programming. If you want to do the same task in selenium, so you will have to locate element and then send keys. So you will have to do programming in case of the selenium. But in case of the robot framework, it's just a simple keywords. We are putting the keyword, we are getting the output. So here robot framework is a tabular syntax. Tabular syntax means we are writing the test case in the form of rows and columns which utilize keyword driven testing approach. Okay, let me explain here. In robot framework we have lot of keywords to perform different tasks. Okay. I give an example if you want to open browser. So we have a keyword with the name open browser, we just need to write keyword and when this keyword will execute automatically it will open browser. So they have done code behind the scene and given us a keyword. We are using the keyword and behind the scene. That particular code that they have written will execute. So here we need not to write code for most of the things we already have, the keywords. So if you understand here, this framework is following. The keyword driven approach means for doing almost all the tasks. We have keywords and we can use these keywords in our automation. So as I give an example, if you want to open browser, we have a keyword open browser. If you want to type something, we have a keyword input text, we have click element, we have close browser. So a lot of keywords we are having, we can use them to perform different tasks. And if you check here, that's a very simple approach. You can easily understand what is written over here and you can easily write test cases. But if you are doing the same task here in Selenium, you must have understanding of the python. You must have understanding how to create object, how to call method. So here programming is mandatory. But if you talk about robot framework, programming is optional for most of the task. For most of the cases we already have the keywords. But if for a particular task keyword is not there, then you will have to write programming. So I can say 90% task can be done even without programming. So robot framework is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing. It has easy to use tabular syntax which utilize keyword driven testing approach next. So as I told you, we have a lot of keywords and these keywords are coming in the form of libraries. We have many built in libraries. We have a lot of libraries available which which you can install and use. But if you want to extend these libraries means as of now, we are taking example, I can do all the tasks by just using the keywords, but if I have a task for which keyword is not available or I say predefined, keyword is not available, in that case, we can use either Python or Java to write our own keyword. So I can say like, okay, you want to open browser, you want to clear history, you want to clear cache, and we don't have any keyword for performing all the tasks. So I can write the code for doing the task and I can use it as a keyword and these kind of keywords which we are going to write in the different programming, we call it user defined keywords. So we can be written either in the Python or Java. So we have seen example of the robot framework code and code in selenium. So you can check it here in code, in selenium or any other tool, you must have programming understanding. But here in the robot framework we are just using the keywords and there is very less programming involved. Then I'm coming to. Advantages of the robot framework. So first of all, it's free means we need not to go for any licensing for it. Then it's a tabular syntax or I'll say easy syntax. So previously I have shown you we are just using a tabular approach. If you check it here. That's my first column in which we are writing keyword. Second column in which we are passing data. So it's a tabular approach we are following. Then it's a fast development with minimum coding efforts. And that is one of the most important point because most of the testers, most of the software testers are not expert in the programming, so they can use the keyword and write test cases over here, even without programming or very or with very minimum programming. So that is the advantage of this framework. Default reporting with the detailed information. That is also a very good advantage of it. After execution, we are going to get very detailed report and we need not to do any extra settings for that. So every time we execute our test cases in robot framework, it will generate a report. Also, we are going to get detailed log files which will be default generated. Then generic test libraries. So we have a lot of libraries which we can use. Like if I take an example, I want to add automate web based application. So we have a library with the name Selenium. If you want to automate API, so we have a library with the name request in the same way, if you want to automate anything on the system, we have a library with the name. If you want to automate AngularJS application. So we have a library with the name extended Selenium two library. So we have a lot of libraries which we can use to automate different applications and that is again a biggest advantage of the robot framework. Then as I told you, it support web testing, it support Windows database, Telnet SSH With the robot framework, we can automate many application, many different type of application and the next is distributed structure. Here in robot framework we are going to distribute our code into different sections. So that is a section like test cases where we are writing our test case. Also we have a section with the name variables where we are defining our variables. Then we have a section keywords where we are going to write user defined keywords. So it's a distributed structure. We are distributing our test case into multiple sections. So the complete test case or the complete structure would be distributed.