Robot Framework Test Automation – The Book

Packt Publishing recently released a new book about  “Robot Framework Test Automation” by Sumit Bisht. The book is a quick and easy 100 pages read that can be useful to those who find the user guide a bit to dry.

First chapter helps go through the installation steps but fails at giving a clear picture of Robot Framework ecosystem: a diagram shows a “testing tool” component being the one that actually target the SUT while Robot Framework is more on the user end side as a coordinator. This is just one way to use Robot (a way that is later described more in details in section about Robot+Selenium and Robot+Sikuli). But Robot can be used to test directly the SUT through its native libraries or some custom libraries.

Second chapter is quite clear about the different file format and the organization of the test portfolio. Third chapter treats the actual creation of test cases with some data about syntax and libraries, but it lacks some examples going from the easiest to more complex cases. Chapter four discuss Robot association with other testing tools (like mentioned before) and finally the last chapter helps generating standard and custom reports.

A topic that is not covered is who is the “ideal” Robot Framework user. It is implied in chapter three that “developer and stakeholders” will collaborate in writing the tests. My experience is rather than a tool like Robot Framework is a very good fit for a QA/testers team that is distinct from dev and stakeholders. For such a team it makes sense to have a specific tool/DSL for testing rather than coding the functional/acceptance tests in the langage of the product.

Globally though the book is a good read, it fails at being a real “missing manual” compared to what the User Guide already offers. The book would maybe have benefit from taking an alternate approach with much more example, like a cookbook, and more experience from the field. Anyway, thanks to Sumit and Packt for the effort in sharing some knowledge about Robot Framework!

2 thoughts on “Robot Framework Test Automation – The Book

  1. Hi, you,
    I want to create schedule to run scripts automatically by Robot framework if these scripts are fail after each run.
    Example: At the first time, TC_01’s script runs but it is fail. I want this script will run automatically until it can pass.
    I don’t know how to write for this script. Can you support me, please?
    Tks so much.
    Ms Hue

  2. it depends how you launch your test today. Via Jenkins? with custom shell script? On which OS? Try something and if it fails, share your code and we will try to find the problems.

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