Python Testing: Installing the Robot Framework

How to do it…

1. Be sure to activate your virtualenv sandbox.
2. Install by typing: easy_install robotframework.
3. Using any type of window navigator, go to <virtualenv root>/build/robotframework/doc/quickstart and open quickstart.html with your favorite browser. This is not only a guide but also a runnable test suite.
4. Switch to your virtualenv’s build directory for Robot Framework: cd <virtualenv root>/build/robotframework/doc/quickstart.
5. Run the Quick Start manual through pybot to verify installation: pybot quickstart.html.

6. Inspect the generated report.html, log.html, and output.xml files generated by the test run.
7. Install the Robot Framework Selenium library to allow integration with Selenium by first downloading: http://robotframework.org/SeleniumLibrary/.
8. Unpack the tarball.
9. Switch to the directory: cd robotframework-seleniumlibrary-2.5.
10. Install the package: python setup.py install.
11. Switch to the demo directory: cd demo.
12. Start up the demo web app: python rundemo.py demoapp start.
13. Start up the Selenium server: python rundemo.py selenium start.
14. Run the demo tests: pybot login_tests.

15. Shutdown the demo web app: python rundemo.py demoapp stop.
16. Shutdown the Selenium server: python rundemo.py selenium stop.
17. Inspect the generated report.html, log.html, output.xml, and selenium_log.txt files generated by the test run.

Summary

With this recipe, we have installed the Robot Framework and one third-party library that integrates Robot with Selenium.

Further resources on this subject:

• Inheritance in Python
• Python Testing: Mock Objects
• Python: Unit Testing with Doctest
• Tips & Tricks on MySQL for Python
• Testing Tools and Techniques in Python