Acceptance Test Driven
Development
using
Robot Framework
Pekka Klärck <peke@eliga.fi>
Janne Härkönen <jth@reaktor.fi>
© Copyright Nokia Siemens Networks
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Acceptance Test Driven Development
● Common understanding
● Ubiquitous language
● Executable requirements/examples
● Living documentation
● Also known as story test driven development,
behavior driven development, executable
requirements, specification by example, ...

The ATDD cycle
© Image copyright Elisabeth Hendrickson

Discuss phase
● Whole team is involved in discussing the
problem and the solution
● Team members gain shared understanding and
common vocabulary
● Concrete examples clarify the solution
● The examples can later be automated

Development phase
● The specified examples guide the
implementation work
● Automation of the examples can be done in
parallel with feature implementation
● The whole team is responsible on automation
● In the end, all the automated examples pass
when run against the implementation

Deliver phase
● Implemented features are demonstrated to all
stakeholders
● Original examples are executed against the
produced software
● Feedback serves as input to the next
discussion phase

Robot Framework
● Generic test automation framework
● Utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach
● Suitable both for "normal" automation and ATDD
● Implemented with Python
● Runs also on Jython (JVM) and IronPython (.NET)
● Open source
● Apache 2.0 License
● Sponsored by Nokia Siemens Networks
● Active development and community

High level architecture

Simple tabular syntax

Executable specifications

Data-driven test cases

Key features
● Creating higher level keywords in test data
● Easy to create domain specific languages
● No programming skills needed
● Variables
● Tagging test cases
● Selecting tests, statistics, ...
● Simple test library API
● Easy to create custom libraries

Separate test data editor (RIDE)

Clear reports

Detailed logs

Rich ecosystem
● Generic test libraries
● Web testing, Swing, SWT, Windows GUIs,
databases, SSH, Telnet, ...
● Build tool integration
● Outputs also in machine readable XML format
● Plugins for Jenkins/Hudson, Maven, Ant, ...
● Text editor support
● Emacs, Vim, TextMate, ...

For more information
● Bridging the Communication Gap book by Gojko
Adzic: http://acceptancetesting.info
● Robot Framework: http://robotframework.org
● ATDD with Robot Framework article by Craig Larman
and Bas Vodde: http://a-tdd.org
● ATDD with Robot Framework demo:
http://code.google.com/p/atdd-with-robot-framework
● Web testing demo with Robot Framework:
http://bit.ly/rf-web-test-demo

Questions?
Thanks!
Pekka Klärck <peke@eliga.fi>
Janne Härkönen <jth@reaktor.fi>