The term “software testing” is used broadly to mean testing a computer program (or application) to see if it meets certain requirements or expectations. Data-driven testing is one way of doing this, and Robot Framework (RTF) has special features that make it great for data-driven testing. In this article, we’re going to cover what data-driven testing is, how it works inside Robot Framework, and give you some tips on where to get started.

What is Robot Framework

Robot Framework is an open-source test automation framework for acceptance testing; it follows different test case styles-keyword-driven, behavior-driven, and data-driven for writing test cases.
This is the framework that comes with all the industry standard Framework features with very minimal coding.

Need For Data-Driven Framework for Test Automation

In data-driven testing frameworks, test data and scripts are separately stored in excel and CSV files. It is very easy to maintain and take care of and update the check information for any purpose of your time. Similarly, any update to the test scripts will be created without affecting the test data.

• Data-driven testing means running automated tests with different input data.
• Data-driven testing helps to achieve better test coverage.
• Data-driven tests will read data from data storage
• You can use a data-driven test approach to prepare test data

Read More: ELT and the Data Warehouse: What You Need to Know

Benefits of Data-Driven Framework for Test Automation

Multiple data types may be used for a sequence of test steps, but creating individual test cases for each set is time-consuming and inefficient.

You can rapidly define a large volume of test cases, especially if they only have different detail. Data-driven testing provides reusable test logic separated from test data. That makes it simple to keep up your test script. You will reach the correct check coverage. Changes are within the check logic, or the check knowledge won’t affect on. Data-driven checking reduces the danger of needless duplicates and redundancy of check cases and automatic test scripts.

Follow the below steps for achieving data-driven testing in the Robot framework.

1. Add Data Driver Library:
   The Data Driver Library makes it possible to use a comma-separated value or Excel file as input data. This way, the data is decoupled from the test script.
   First, we need to install the library:

   Installation

   If you already have Python >= 3.6 with pip installed, you can simply run:

   pip install –upgrade robotframework-datadriver

2. Built-in method for getting data-driven results in robot framework
   1. Create a keyword with the common step, either in the Tests file or the keyword file
   2. It has [Arguments] to catch test data
   3. Add [Test Template] to the test case
   4. Associates the keyword having common steps
   5. Add data rows to the test case
   6. These will be passed into keyword[Arguments]

   Structure of data file

   min. required columns

   1. Test Cases

      column has to be the first one.

   2. Argument columns: For each argument of the

      Test Template

      keyword one column must be existing in the data file as data source. The name of this column must match the variable name and syntax.

      

      In this data file, two test cases are defined. Each line specifies one test case. The first test cases have Data1 names. The second one test cases will Data2 names based on template test cases name with the replacement of variables in this name. The order of columns is irrelevant except the first column,

      Test Template

3. How to Write Data Driven Tests Creating Robot Framework test and filename is EmployeeData.robot. Which contain script that allows us to retrieve an employee name, middelname, lastname from a Excel or CSV file, to retrieve the list of employees.

   Create login_resources.robot file contain all keyword and locator defined that are used in our script .this file is import in our EmployeeData.robot file.

   

   

   For running test cases in Robot Framework used following command

   

   After the execution of Test cases, the log.html file also contains this result and we can verify that Setup, Teardown, and the Template are invoked with the data from the excel file.

   

   Data-driven tests in the robot allow you to view each test data as a separate test case in the log files.
   After executing test cases In Terminal shows the following result:

   

4. Challenges with Data Driven Framework for Test Automation Using a data-driven framework does come with its own challenges. A few of which are:

• to make sure the accuracy and responsibility that’s expected of those reports, we should 1st make sure that the information itself is correct, complete, and within the right format.

Conclusion:

If you’re looking to get started with data-driven testing soon, keep these steps in mind. Use them as a starting point, and adapt them to fit your needs. That way, you can get up and running quickly. And once you do, you’ll be well on your way to building better tests for your applications—which will in turn improve the quality of the software that you produce.