I recently interviewed the creator of the Robot Framework, Pekka Klark, on my TestGuild Automation Testing podcast. So I thought it would be an excellent time to create a quick tutorial on how to get started with Robot Framework in Java.
The Robot Framework is an open-source test automation framework based on Python and uses a keyword-driven approach to test automation. Robot Framework also supports Jython(Java) and IronPython(.NET).
Just a heads up, I’m not an expert in the Robot Framework – yet. I’m just starting, and this post is me learning as I go in real time. I honestly couldn’t find any clear setup instructions to start with the Robot Framework in Java.
But based on what I found in the getting started instructions and various StackOverflow conversations, this is what I did. Some of these steps might not be 100% necessary, but they worked on getting my example to run.
I will post more Robot Framework tutorials as I learn new things to share with others who might be starting off.
In this post, you’ll learn.
- The basics of Robot Framework
- How to install the Robot Framework
- The plugins needed for Robot Framework
INDEX
How to Install Robot Framework
Install Robot Framework Selenium2 Library in Java
Create a simple project
Add entries to the Pom file
Create your first Robot Framework Java test
Create a Maven Run Command Goal and Run the Test
Install Robotide Eclipse IDE plugin
How to Install Robot Framework
For this example, I will be using Java with Maven and will be using Selenium2Library. Besides Selenium, the Robot Framework has external libraries with existing keywords for lots of other technologies like
- Appium
- Android
- Swing
- FTP
- HTTP
- Database
- AutoIt
Install Robot Framework Selenium2 Library in Java
All we need to do for this example is import a few libraries into our project Maven pom file. Let's take a look at creating a simple project that includes the Robot Framework maven dependencies.
Create a simple project
In Eclipse, select File>New>Other, and in the New dialog, select the Maven folder
- Select Maven Project
- Click on the Use default Workspace location, and click Next
- On the next screen, select the default maven-archetype-quickstart option
- Click Next
- Enter the following:
- Group Id = com.testtalks.robot
- Artificat Id = javarobot
- Version = 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
- Click Finish
Add entries to the Pom file
You should now have a project called javabot. Expand it and double-click the pom.xml
Open your pom.xml file and add the following dependencies:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.robotframework</groupId>
<artifactId>robotframework</artifactId>
<version>2.8.7</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.robotframework</groupId>
<artifactId>robotframework-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.1.0</version>
<type>maven-plugin</type>
</dependency>
Also, add the following plugin:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.robotframework</groupId>
<artifactId>robotframework-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.1.0</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
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Create your first Robot Framework Java test
You don’t actually write your Robot Framework test in java. Robot Framework is a generic keyword-driven framework that uses text files with keywords that it understands to run your tests.
So in Java, all you are doing right now is creating a text file with Selenium2 keywords.
Because the Robot Framework comes with many ready-made built-in keywords for things like Selenium, it is easy to get started with a simple test and not have to write any code.
So let’s create our Java Robot project and test case.
- Under the src/test/java directory add a New Folder named robotframework/acceptance
- Click on Finish
- Right-click on acceptance and select New>File
- Name the file txt
Open the Test_Case_1 text file and enter the following. Be careful spaces matter! There are two spaces between everything.
*** Settings ***
Documentation A resource file containing the application specific keywords
Library Selenium2Library
*** Test Cases ***
Check out joe colantonio dot com
Open Browser https://testguild.com ff
Close Browser
To find out what each keyword used in this simple example and what other keywords are available to you go to the keyword documentation:
https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/github/markusbernhardt/robotframework-selenium2library-java/1.4.0.8/robotframework-selenium2library-java-1.4.0.8-libdoc.html
In our example, you can see that for the Open Browser keyword, it opens a new browser instance given URL.
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Create a Maven Run Command Goal and Run the Test
- Right-click on the java robot directory and select Run As>Run Configurations..
- In the Run Configuration dialog dbl click on the Maven Build
- Click on the Browser Workspace button and select the java robot project as the base directory
- Under Goals enter robotframework:run
- Click on the Resolve Workspace artifacts and the Update Snapshots
- Click Apply
- Click Run
If all goes well the browser should start and navigate to joecolantonio.com without any errors.
I kept getting the error Failed to execute goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run at first when I tried this example.
It turned out to be due to me not having two spaces between my URL and the browser type I wanted to run. The Robot Framework cares about proper formatting, like spaces!
Install Robotide Eclipse IDE plugin
To avoid any issues with spaces, let’s also install the robotide Eclipse IDE plugin for RobotFramework:
- Close eclipse
- Navigate to : https://sourceforge.net/projects/robotide/files/stable/features/
- Click on the Download content.jar
- Once the content.jar is downloaded copy it to your eclipse’s plugins and features directories
- Restart Eclipse now in your .robot file if you don’t have the correct amount of spaces between your parameters
Final Thoughts
That’s it for our introduction to Robot Framework in Java! We hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you want to learn more or get started using Robot Framework for your projects, check out Test Guild. Our website is packed with information on automation tools and techniques and tutorials like this one.
And if you have questions about Robot Framework or anything related to automated testing, don’t hesitate to reach out – we love helping people learn new things and grow their skill sets. Thanks for reading, and happy testing!
Getting this error. INFO] ————————————————————————
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run (default-cli) on project CoreRobot: Execution default-cli of goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run failed: An API incompatibility was encountered while executing org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/robotframework/RobotFramework : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
[ERROR] —————————————————–
[ERROR] realm = plugin>org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6
[ERROR] strategy = org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.strategy.SelfFirstStrategy
Could be many things. Most likely a Maven Pom file issue. Are you behind a firewall?
Getting this error:
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run (default-cli) on project RobotFramwork: Execution default-cli of goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run failed. PyException: Cannot create PyString with non-byte value -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/PluginExecutionException
Exception in thread “Jython-Netty-Client-6” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/python/netty/util/concurrent/DefaultFutureListeners
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultPromise.notifyListeners(DefaultPromise.java:577)
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultPromise.setSuccess(DefaultPromise.java:397)
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.SingleThreadEventExecutor$2.run(SingleThreadEventExecutor.java:155)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultFutureListeners
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.strategy.SelfFirstStrategy.loadClass(SelfFirstStrategy.java:50)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.unsynchronizedLoadClass(ClassRealm.java:271)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:247)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:239)
… 4 more
Can you help me?
Hi Joe,
Thanks for a such nice article. Very helpful indeed.
I am new to Robot Framework. I followed the steps listed in the article however keep getting following error while running the test.
Is there any pointer you can provide for resolution?
—————————————————————————————
Failed to execute goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run (default-cli) on project JavaRobot: Execution default-cli of goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run failed: Plugin org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6 or one of its dependencies could not be resolved: Could not find artifact com.sun:tools:jar:6 at specified path C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_101/../lib/tools.jar -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/PluginResolutionException
This looks like a maven issue. Sometime the .m2 folder gets corrupted. What happens if you delete the folder and rebuild your maven project?
I got an issue like as :
org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Failed to connect to binary FirefoxBinary(/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin) on port 7055; process output follows:
Locale”:{“name”:”Default”,”description”:”The default theme.”,”creator”:”Mozilla”,”homepageURL”:null,”contributors”:[“Mozilla Contributors”]},”visible”:true,”active”:true,”userDisabled”:false,”appDisabled”:false,”descriptor”:”/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/browser/extensions/{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}.xpi”,”installDate”:1486024522000,”updateDate”:1486024522000,”applyBackgroundUpdates”:1,”skinnable”:true,”size”:6352,”sourceURI”:null,”releaseNotesURI”:null,”softDisabled”:false,”foreignInstall”:false,”hasBinaryComponents”:false,”strictCompatibility”:true,”locales”:[],”targetApplications”:[{“id”:”{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}”,”minVersion”:”51.0.1″,”maxVersion”:”51.0.1″}],”targetPlatforms”:[],”seen”:true,”dependencies”:[],”hasEmbeddedWebExtension”:false}
–> seem like the robot couldn’t input the URL. Could you help me to solve it ? Thanks so muck
Thanks for the article.
When I am running the same test, I am getting below exception:-
As I need to run this using Java then why this is throwing exception regarding python.
Exception in thread “Jython-Netty-Client-1” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/python/netty/util/concurrent/DefaultFutureListeners
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultPromise.notifyListeners(DefaultPromise.java:577)
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultPromise.setSuccess(DefaultPromise.java:397)
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.SingleThreadEventExecutor$2.run(SingleThreadEventExecutor.java:155)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultFutureListeners
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.strategy.SelfFirstStrategy.loadClass(SelfFirstStrategy.java:50)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.unsynchronizedLoadClass(ClassRealm.java:271)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:247)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:239)
… 4 more
Exception in thread “Jython-Netty-Client-8” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/python/netty/util/concurrent/DefaultFutureListeners
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultPromise.notifyListeners(DefaultPromise.java:577)
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.DefaultPromise.setSuccess(DefaultPromise.java:397)
at org.python.netty.util.concurrent.SingleThreadEventExecutor$2.run(SingleThreadEventExecutor.java:155)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Thank you for sharing nice article.
I followed the steps, but I got prefix error
[INFO] ————————————————————————
[ERROR] No plugin found for prefix ‘robotframework’ in the current project and in the plugin groups [org.apache.maven.plugins, org.codehaus.mojo] available from the repositories [local (C:\Users\mishra.rakesh\.m2\repository), central (https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2)] -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]
can you please help me to resolve this
Hi Joe,
I am getting the below error on running.
Failed to execute goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run (default-cli) on project AntsRobot: Execution default-cli of goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run failed: Plugin org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6 or one of its dependencies could not be resolved: Could not find artifact com.sun:tools:jar:6 at specified path C:\Users\AB76137\Desktop\eclipse\jre/../lib/tools.jar -> [Help 1]
Please help
how to take variable file in our testcase
Getting Error –
[ ERROR ] Error in file ‘D:\RobotFramework\Workplace\javarobot\src\test\robotframework\acceptance\Test_Case_1.txt’: Importing test library ‘Selenium2Library’ failed: ImportError: No module named Selenium2Library
Traceback (most recent call last):
None
PYTHONPATH:
C:\maven\repo\org\robotframework\robotframework\3.0.2\Lib
Acceptance.Test Case 1 :: A resource file containing the application specif…
Hi All,
Thanks Joe for this great article.
In case anyone needs the pom.xml at one place:
4.0.0
RFTEST
RFTEST2
0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
jar
RFTEST2
http://maven.apache.org
UTF-8
org.robotframework
robotframework-maven-plugin
1.7.1
run
com.github.hi-fi
robotframework-seleniumlibrary
3.141.59.26535
test
org.python
jython-slim
2.7.2
junit
junit
3.8.1
test
Note:
I was facing an error like below and found a workaround for the same:
Failed to execute goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run (default-cli) on project JavaRobot: Execution default-cli of goal org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6:run failed: Plugin org.robotframework:robotframework-maven-plugin:1.4.6 or one of its dependencies could not be resolved: Could not find artifact com.sun:tools:jar:6 at specified path C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_101/../lib/tools.jar -> [Help 1]
Workaround 1(which worked for me):
Goto your Eclipse folder >>Eclipse configuration settings file and add the following before vmargs:
-vm
C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_66\bin\javaw.exe
Workaround 2(I found on the internet):
Add an exclusion tag to your selenium library dependency as below:
com.github.markusbernhardt
robotframework-selenium2library-java
1.4.0.7
test
tools
com.sun
I only receive the msg that tools.jar was not found when I tried to run the goal. How can I fix it?