robot module

The root of the Robot Framework package.

The command line entry points provided by the framework are exposed for programmatic usage as follows:

  • run(): Function to run tests.

  • run_cli(): Function to run tests with command line argument processing.

  • rebot(): Function to post-process outputs.

  • rebot_cli(): Function to post-process outputs with command line argument processing.

  • libdoc: Module for library documentation generation.

  • testdoc: Module for test case documentation generation.

All the functions above can be imported like from robot import run. Functions and classes provided by the modules need to be imported like from robot.libdoc import libdoc_cli.

The functions and modules listed above are considered stable. Other modules in this package are for for internal usage and may change without prior notice.

Tip

More public APIs are exposed by the robot.api package.

robot.rebot(*outputs, **options)

Programmatic entry point for post-processing outputs.

Parameters

  • outputs – Paths to Robot Framework output files similarly as when running the rebot command on the command line.

  • options – Options to configure processing outputs. Accepted options are mostly same as normal command line options to the rebot command. Option names match command line option long names without hyphens so that, for example, --name becomes name.

The semantics related to passing options are exactly the same as with the run() function. See its documentation for more details.

Examples:

from robot import rebot

rebot('path/to/output.xml')
with open('stdout.txt', 'w') as stdout:
    rebot('o1.xml', 'o2.xml', name='Example', log=None, stdout=stdout)

Equivalent command line usage:

rebot path/to/output.xml
rebot --name Example --log NONE o1.xml o2.xml > stdout.txt
robot.rebot_cli(arguments=None, exit=True)

Command line execution entry point for post-processing outputs.

Parameters

  • arguments – Command line options and arguments as a list of strings. Defaults to sys.argv[1:] if not given.

  • exit – If True, call sys.exit with the return code denoting execution status, otherwise just return the rc.

Entry point used when post-processing outputs from the command line, but can also be used by custom scripts. Especially useful if the script itself needs to accept same arguments as accepted by Rebot, because the script can just pass them forward directly along with the possible default values it sets itself.

Example:

from robot import rebot_cli

rebot_cli(['--name', 'Example', '--log', 'NONE', 'o1.xml', 'o2.xml'])

See also the rebot() function that allows setting options as keyword arguments like name="Example" and generally has a richer API for programmatic Rebot execution.

robot.run(*tests, **options)

Programmatic entry point for running tests.

Parameters

  • tests – Paths to test case files/directories to be executed similarly as when running the robot command on the command line.

  • options – Options to configure and control execution. Accepted options are mostly same as normal command line options to the robot command. Option names match command line option long names without hyphens so that, for example, --name becomes name.

Most options that can be given from the command line work. An exception is that options --pythonpath, --argumentfile, --help and --version are not supported.

Options that can be given on the command line multiple times can be passed as lists. For example, include=['tag1', 'tag2'] is equivalent to --include tag1 --include tag2. If such options are used only once, they can be given also as a single string like include='tag'.

Options that accept no value can be given as Booleans. For example, dryrun=True is same as using the --dryrun option.

Options that accept string NONE as a special value can also be used with Python None. For example, using log=None is equivalent to --log NONE.

listener, prerunmodifier and prerebotmodifier options allow passing values as Python objects in addition to module names these command line options support. For example, run('tests', listener=MyListener()).

To capture the standard output and error streams, pass an open file or file-like object as special keyword arguments stdout and stderr, respectively.

A return code is returned similarly as when running on the command line. Zero means that tests were executed and no test failed, values up to 250 denote the number of failed tests, and values between 251-255 are for other statuses documented in the Robot Framework User Guide.

Example:

from robot import run

run('path/to/tests.robot')
run('tests.robot', include=['tag1', 'tag2'], splitlog=True)
with open('stdout.txt', 'w') as stdout:
    run('t1.robot', 't2.robot', name='Example', log=None, stdout=stdout)

Equivalent command line usage:

robot path/to/tests.robot
robot --include tag1 --include tag2 --splitlog tests.robot
robot --name Example --log NONE t1.robot t2.robot > stdout.txt
robot.run_cli(arguments=None, exit=True)

Command line execution entry point for running tests.

Parameters

  • arguments – Command line options and arguments as a list of strings. Defaults to sys.argv[1:] if not given.

  • exit – If True, call sys.exit with the return code denoting execution status, otherwise just return the rc.

Entry point used when running tests from the command line, but can also be used by custom scripts that execute tests. Especially useful if the script itself needs to accept same arguments as accepted by Robot Framework, because the script can just pass them forward directly along with the possible default values it sets itself.

Example:

from robot import run_cli

# Run tests and return the return code.
rc = run_cli(['--name', 'Example', 'tests.robot'], exit=False)

# Run tests and exit to the system automatically.
run_cli(['--name', 'Example', 'tests.robot'])

See also the run() function that allows setting options as keyword arguments like name="Example" and generally has a richer API for programmatic test execution.