Acceptance test driven development (ATDD) is an important agile practice merging requirement gathering with acceptance testing. In its core are concrete examples, created together with the team, that provide collaborative understanding and, as automated acceptance tests, make sure that the features are implemented correctly. There are many ways to create ATDD examples/tests, and the behavior driven­ development (BDD) style with Given­-When­-Then format is one of the more popular ones. Robot Framework is an open source test automation framework suitable for ATDD and acceptance testing in general. It has a flexible test data syntax that supports keyword­-driven, data-­driven, and BDD styles, but is still simple enough so that also non­-programmers can create and understand test cases. The simple test library API makes extending the framework easy, and there are several ready made libraries that allow testing generic interfaces such as web, databases, Swing, SWT, Windows GUIs, Flex, and SSH out­-of-­the­-box. This presentation gives an introduction both to ATDD and Robot Framework. It contains different demonstrations and all the material will be freely available after the presentation.

1. 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

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

3. The ATDD cycle
© Image copyright Elisabeth Hendrickson

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. High level architecture

8. Simple tabular syntax

9. Executable specifications

10. Data-driven test cases

11. 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

12. Separate test data editor (RIDE)

13. Clear reports

14. Detailed logs

15. 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, ...

16. 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

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