Book Image

Robot Framework Test Automation

By : Sumit Bisht
Book Image

Robot Framework Test Automation

By: Sumit Bisht

Overview of this book

Testing has traditionally been a part of software development, and has always involved a lot of manual effort. It can be automated with Robot Framework, which offers numerous benefits from cost saving to increased quality assurance in the software delivery. This book will help you to start designing test suites and Automated Acceptance Tests. Helping you to get started with automating acceptance tests, this book will provide a detailed overview of acceptance test management practices and principles. You will also be introduced to advanced techniques that you can use to customize the test suite, along with helpful tips and tricks to extend and leverage it in a wide variety of scenarios. Starting with a detailed explanation of the need for automated acceptance test driven development, this guide will help you with an empty test project creation and execution for proof of concept, and validation of installation. This book will also cover the Robot Framework in detail, and will help you test desktop applications using Java Swing. You will gain an in-depth knowledge of tricky activities, such as setting up a test environment and using it with Selenium. You will also learn about other popular libraries, and how to test network protocols, web services, and databases. This book will cover the entire Robot Framework with real- world practical material to make its content informative and interesting. By the end of this book you will be able to write acceptance tests for desktop and web applications, as well as know how to extend acceptance testing in other scenarios that are commonly devoid of tests, and present the results appropriately.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

The need for acceptance testing


For tests that are large in size or complexity, a structured approach can help you to pinpoint the errors, which arise while testing for the system is carried out under test's acceptance. Increase in the development speed and efficiency as well as create accountability for various features of the software are also taken into consideration. These benefits can be summarized as follows:

  • Pinpoint application failure

  • Reduced error rate

  • Provide automation and reusability

  • Create a test audit trail

Pinpoint application failure

Through testing, it is possible for you to identify complete or partial failures as well as identify bottlenecks in performance that might have slipped during development or in other forms of testing.

Reducing the error rate

Through automation, the predetermined steps involved to run the program can be performed exactly as desired with no interference as well as no extra or erroneous user interactions. This is different from monkey testing as in acceptance testing; only the happy path scenario is to be dealt with.

Providing automation and re-use

Testers or any other human resources are expensive than computation cycles. So it is best to automate the repetitive tasks, which will also reduce time that is normally spent in typing, clicking, and digesting the user interface as well by the test user. Furthermore, test can be reused or iterated over, which reduces the amount of tests while making sure that the complete acceptance testing remains while you can focus on other problems.

Creating the a test audit trail

By keeping a record of various test results, you can gather interesting facts about acceptance testing such as how much of the system under test is covered under acceptance tests as well as how many failures were reported. This can be useful in changing management as well as re-engineering/modernization of the existing software.