Planning: Keyword-driven frameworks need more extensive planning as compared to Data-driven frameworks. With data-driven frameworks, you only need to plan for what test data and test scripts are needed.
With keyword-driven frameworks, you need to plan for keywords and their implementations along with test data and test scripts. Management: If not properly planned, test automation systems using keyword-driven frameworks could be much harder to manage as compared to data-driven frameworks. Maintenance: A well-planned keyword-driven test automation system is easier to maintain as it has well-defined layers of abstraction between test data, test scripts, keywords and their implementation.
On the other hand, a data-driven test automation system has abstraction only between test data and test scripts.
Selecting the Right Test Automation Framework Different factors can be considered in selecting the right testing framework for your product. Let us explore them.
If your testing team has members who are not good at programming but have good knowledge of the product to be tested, you can choose a keyword-driven framework so that everyone can contribute in creating automation for the product. Product behaviour is expected to change: If you know there can be a change in the way some features of the product are expected to behave, a keyword-driven framework can be your option as you would only need to update the implementations of few functions at one place rather than changing multiple test scripts.
Depending on your need you can also choose to have a hybrid framework, where you can combine data-driven and keyword-driven frameworks to take advantage of both. Managing and scaling such frameworks over time may bring its own challenges along with the benefits.
Before finalizing any framework for building your test automation system for the product, it is important to make an analysis of what you need from a framework and what are your strengths as a team to work with the framework. Import test data profiles or create your own. Run the same automated test multiple times with different data sets. Subscribe to get all our latest blogs, updates delivered directly to your inbox. March 24, What is a Test Framework?
Benefits of a Test Automation Framework A test automation framework offers several benefits, some of which can be mentioned as follows: Efficiency: A test automation framework provides a structure for the test automation tasks like test creation, test execution, organization of tests, test data creation or reporting. Different Types of Test Automation Frameworks: Test automation frameworks can be broadly classified as follows: Linear: In linear frameworks, test scripts are created in a record and playback manner which generates sequential test steps with hardcoded test data.
Need for Data-Driven Framework for Test Automation In non-data driven testing frameworks, test data is embedded in test scripts which makes it difficult to update the test data at any point of time. For example, if you need to test a video player, a very basic testing script would look something like this: For non-data driven framework for testing: Load A. Less Error-Prone: As test data and test scripts are different entities, each can be updated independently without interfering with others.
This reduces the chances of introducing errors in the test automation system while updating either test data or test scripts. More Flexibility: Since test data is stored externally, it is easier to perform positive and negative testing using the same test scripts just by updating the test data. Easier Maintenance: Data-driven test automation systems are easier to maintain as compared to non-data driven test automation systems, where test data and test scripts are tightly coupled and cannot be updated independently.
Challenges with Data-Driven Framework for Test Automation Using a data-driven framework does come with its own challenges. A few of which are: Programming Expertise: Testers need to have the good programming knowledge to write the test scripts. Planning is Important: Test automation systems need to be well planned in terms of test scripts, test data, and their interactions.
Getting Started Takes Time: Getting started with a data-driven framework does take more time as compared to non-data driven frameworks where test scripts can also be made using record and playback manner. For example, if you need to test a video player, a very basic testing script would look something like this: For a non-keyword driven framework: Load media Click Play button For a keyword-driven framework: Load Play Keywords and Functions Mapping would look something like this: Keyword Function Description Load loadMedia Loads the media in the player.
Play Click play Clicks the play button in the player. This is very useful when test cases need to be developed before the application is ready for testing. More Suited for Agile: Keyword-driven frameworks are very helpful when products are developed using Agile methodologies. Challenges with Keyword Driven Frameworks Using keyword-driven frameworks has its own challenges, such as: Keyword Management: Inventing and managing unique meaningful keywords for various types of actions becomes a daunting task for large projects.
This sometimes poses problems for scaling. Normally the execution of the current test ends if any of the keywords fails, but it is also possible to continue after failures by using any of following keywords found in BuiltIn library:.
Errors caused by invalid syntax, timeouts, or fatal exceptions are not caught by these keywords. Otherwise, the keyword itself never fails. Variable errors are caught by these keywords. Library keywords report failures using exceptions, and it is possible to use special exceptions to tell the core framework that execution can continue regardless the failure. This is illustrated by the Python code below. After test execution, Robot Framework automatically generates the test report, log, and output files.
These files provide an extensive look into what your system did during test execution. The generated report. Test Statistics shows the same information for each test suite, and Test Details allows you to drill down to test cases in a test suite.
When there is a failure the background colour of the test report is red. Sample reports are shown in the screenshots below. The generated log. Log file is needed when test results are to be investigated in details because it allows you to drill down on the specific part of the test in case of failure as shown in the screenshot below. The generated output. It can be opened in any text editor or Internet browser as shown in the screenshot below.
There are supporting tools that you can use to help design, build, and run your test automation suite. Robot Framework has built-in tools for reporting, documentation and cleaning up test data files. There are individually developed tools for editing test data, tools for running Robot Framework tests, and tools for collecting and publishing Robot Framework test results. Robot Framework is available to everyone to download and use, featuring fast and easy installation and setup, as well as non-complicated methods of writing automated test cases.
The tool automatically generates test reports and logs that are viewable on web pages, and the amount of readily available libraries significantly increases its testing capabilities. Support from users all over the world makes the system comfortable to operate and explore, whilst the maximum ability of the tool derived from this framework can be achieved with no tooling costs. With a range of benefits on offer, it becomes clear why Robot Framework is one of the best automated testing frameworks for regression testing.
Automation Environments Selenium. Introduction Automated Regression Testing can help us ensure the quality of our growing applications. Robot Framework has a modular architecture as shown in the illustration below. Figure 1 - Robot Framework modular architecture diagram This makes it reusable, easy to expand, and painless to maintain. From Downloads folder, click the python This enables python to be executed in command window. Figure 3 — Sample robot test file resource.
Figure 7 — Keywords for Browser Actions There are ready made test libraries for the framework which you can use to build your automated testing suite. Setups and Teardowns Using Setups and Teardowns is best practice as it adds a level of control to your test by putting your environment into a known state before and after your tests. Setups If a test suite has Suite Setup , it is executed before its tests and child suites.
Teardowns If the test suite has Suite Teardown , it is executed after all its test cases and child suites. Figure 8 — Keyword teardown in a test case The keyword teardown works similar to test case teardown. Sequence of Execution Test cases in a test suite are executed in the same order as they are defined in the test case file. Such prefixes are not included in the generated test suite name if they are separated from the base name of the suite with two underscores: Figure 8 — Test Files with pre-fixes to control the execution order When execution is started, the framework first parses the test data in the robot test file.
Test Suite Test cases are always executed within a test suite. Figure 10 - Running test suite created from a directory The screenshot below shows a running test suite created from a test case file. Figure 11 - Running test suite created from a test case file You will see the progress of the test in the command window during test execution. Figure 12 — Test Execution in Progress By default all the tests in an executed suite are run, but it is possible to select tests using options --test , --suite , --include and --exclude.
Normally the execution of the current test ends if any of the keywords fails, but it is also possible to continue after failures by using any of following keywords found in BuiltIn library: Run Keyword And Ignore Error — Runs the given keyword with the given arguments and ignores possible error.
The expected error must be given in the same format as in Robot Framework reports. Figure 18 — Output. Create maintainable and scalable automated UI tests that every team member can understand. The built-in keyword driven automation framework in TestComplete allows you to easily separate test steps, objects, actions, and test data. Reuse any of these components across projects without any technical knowledge.
Switch from a keyword test to a scripted test if needed. With a single click, you can convert existing desktop, mobile, and web keyword tests into scripted tests for faster and more efficient GUI testing.
NET among others. Create keyword tests once and reuse them across multiple projects to save time.
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