Writing Robot Framework tests for Plone

plone.app.robotframework provides Robot Framework-compatible tools and resources for writing functional Selenium-tests (including acceptance tests) for Plone CMS and its add-ons.

This documentation gives you everything to get started in writing and executing functional Selenium tests (including acceptance tests) for Plone or your own Plone add-on. We depend on two testing frameworks, Robot Framework and Selenium (with Selenium2Library), and our tools and resources provided in plone.app.robotframework.

Robot Framework is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), even for behavior driven development (BDD). It has easy-to-use plain text test syntax and utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach. Selenium is a web browser automation framework that exercises the browser as if the user was interacting with the browser.

Start here

Start here to learn the default way of writing Robot Framework tests to be run just next to your other Plone-tests with zope.testrunner:

• How to write Robot Framework tests for Plone
  • Require plone.app.robotframework
  • Define functional testing layer
  • Install Robot-tools
  • Start test server
  • Write your first test suite
  • Run your first test suite
  • Integrate with Zope-testrunner
  • Running tests with zope.testrunner
  • Running tests with a different browser
  • How to write more tests
• Robot terminology
  • Test suites
  • Keywords libraries
  • Remote keyword libraries
  • Resource files
  • BDD-style tests

Print these

Print these keyword libraries to be easily available when writing Robot Framework tests, because they provide the basic building blocks for your tests:

• Robot Framework built-in library documentation

• Robot Framework Selenium2Library documentation

Advanced topics

• Debugging Robot Framework tests
• Integrate with Travis-CI
• Integrate with Sauce Labs
• Auto-reload code with robot-server
• Installing RIDE (Robot Framework IDE)

User keywords

plone.app.robotframework ships with the following user keyword libraries as resource files:

• libdoc/user_keywords.html

• libdoc/user_saucelabs.html

• libdoc/user_selenium.html

• libdoc/user_server.html

Each user keyword library can be included as a resource with Resource plone/app/robotframework/libraryname.rst in test suite *** Settings ***.

Remote keywords

Remote keywords are a special plone.app.robotframework-way to implement Plone-specific keyword in Python for e.g. creating Plone content in test setup keywords. plone.app.robotframework comes with the following remote keyword libraries:

• libdoc/remote_autologin.html

• libdoc/remote_content.html

• libdoc/remote_genericsetup.html

• libdoc/remote_i18n.html

• libdoc/remote_mockmailhost.html

• libdoc/remote_quickinstaller.html

• libdoc/remote_users.html

• libdoc/remote_zope2server.html

All remote keywords above are included by including a special test fixture plone.app.robotframework.testing.REMOTE_LIBRARY_BUNDLE_FIXTURE in bases of the used functional testing fixture, and finally with Library  Remote ${PLONE_URL}/RobotRemote-command in test suite *** Settings ***.

See testing.py in plone.app.robotframework for how to create a custom remote library bundle fixture with only selected (or custom) remote keyword libraries.

Python keywords

In addition to user keywords and remote libraries, plone.app.robotframeworks provides the following generic Python keyword libraries (their code is not dependent on Plone code base).

• libdoc/python_debugging.html

• libdoc/python_layoutmath.html

• libdoc/python_saucelabs.html

• libdoc/python_zope2server.html

Each Python keyword library can be included as with Library plone.app.robotframework.LibraryClassName in test suite `*** Settings ***.

Other resources

• How to write good Robot Framework test cases

• List of available Robot Framework test libraries

• plone.app.robotframework examples of use

Old tutorials

Note

While these tutorials are still useful for gettings started with Robot Framework testing for Plone, these may contain outdated instructions!

• Write a robot test for a new Plone add-on
• Write a robot test for an existing Plone add-on
• Speed up your test writing with robot-server
• Speed up your BDD Given-clauses with a remote library