Set up the project for Windows

• Set up the project for Windows

• Set up the environment

  • Download and install Python
  • Download and install Poetry
  • Download and install an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

• Create the project for test libraries

  • Initialize the project
  • Open the project in IDE - PyCharm

• Create new test cases

Set up the environment

Download and install Python

Download Windows installer (64-bit) from Python official website. Recommended to follow the configs below:

Can check the setup by go to the system environment variables

If these system variables do not add in Path, you can add two paths directly same as above image, or you can add it by using the command:

$Env:Path += ";C:\Softwares\Python\;C:\Softwares\Python\Scripts\"; setx -m PATH "$Env:Path"

Download and install Poetry

Poetry is a modern tool for package management in Python that simplifies the process of creating, managing, and publishing Python packages.

The way to install Poetry is with the support of pipx, which takes care of creating and maintaining isolated virtual environments for command-line Python applications.

python -m pip install pipx

Now, install poetry by using pipx

pipx install poetry

This command will install Poetry into a dedicated virtual environment that won't be shared with other Python packages.

pipx will set an alias to the poetry executable in your shell so that you can invoke Poetry from any directory without manually activating the associated virtual environment.

Run the command to executable path for poetry:

pipx ensurepath

Once the installation process is completed, you can verify that Poetry is installed correctly by executing the following command:

poetry -- version

Also, install the virtual package enables the creation of isolated local virtual environments for Python projects. Virtual environments help avoid package conflicts and enable choosing specific package version.

pipx install virtualenv

Download and install an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Download PyCharm Community Edition as the IDE for Pure Python Development from https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/?section=windows

Create the project for test libraries

Initialize the project

• Create new project by using the command following format < project's folder name > and < first package >, for example:

poetry new robot-fwk-python --name practice-expand-testing

• If the first package name is same as the project name, skip --name
• If you have created an empty directory, using the below command to create the first package

poetry init --name practice-expand-testing

For this project, I've created the project before, so I will use the second command to create the first package. And in this step, I also add some packages to the project, such as robotframework,playwright.

You also can add more packages to the project by using the command poetry add <package_name> (I will show you how to do it below in "Open the project in IDE - PyCharm" ).

• Configure the virtual environment in the project, and create it automatically if it isn't exist

poetry config --local virtualenvs.create true

poetry config --local virtualenvs.in-project true

For any config --local it will be added to poetry.toml which is the local configuration file for Poetry instances.

To read pyproject.toml file from the current project, resolve the dependencies, and install them

poetry install

Note:

After run the command poetry install then we got an error about not found the package 'practice-expand-testing' and also don't have .venv folder.

• First we need to create the package file "practice_expand_testing" with a simple .py file. Since the command poetry init --name practice-expand-testing is only added in py.project.toml file. The package file should be created manually and the name should use "_" instead of "-".

• Second we need to check the virtual environment in the project by using the command: poetry env info --path. Then, we can see the virtual environment is created in another path, not under the project folder. So, we need to move it to the project folder by using the command del <path>

• Finally, we need to create the virtual environment in the project by using the command poetry install again. Then, the .venv folder will be created in the project folder.

Open the project in IDE - PyCharm

With the virtual env created in the project by Poetry, once the project is opened in IDE, the IDE can configure the base interpreter by using .venv itself.

We created and successfully activated the project with the isolated virtual environment. We can add more dependencies to the project via Poetry command add.

For example, if the project is empty, and you are starting from scratch, run the poetry add command below one by one to install these essential libraries. Or you can add it to pyproject.toml under section [tool.poetry.dependencies], then perform poetry install once.

poetry add robotframework

poetry add playwright

poetry add robotframework-pythonlibcore

poetry add selenium

I've already added the packages of robotframework and playwright above. So, at this step, I will add the rest of the packages to the project.

Those dependencies will be installed in project .venv.

If you decide to set up the same project on another machine, you can install the dependencies by using the command:

poetry install

So, now we just need to install Python, poetry, and no need to add packages one by one. Just run the command poetry install to install all the dependencies in the project.

Save the project dependencies to requirements.txt file by using the command:

poetry export --without-hashes --format=requirements.txt --output=requirements.txt

The requirements.txt file will be created in the project root folder. This file will support users if they want to use pip instead of poetry to install the dependencies.

pip install -r .\requirements.txt

After run this command, the user can install the dependencies in the project by using pip instead of poetry.

• NOTE: We should export the requirements file after adding new packages to the project. Because the requirements.txt file will be overwritten with the new dependencies.

Create a git.ignore file in the project root folder to ignore the Virtualenv folder .venv and poetry.lock folder.

.venv/ poetry.lock .idea/

Create new test cases

We need to add another package to integrate with Playwright. Following to https://robotframework.org/, they have the new library that supports for Playwright

Run the command poetry add robotframework-browser to add the new library

We need to activate the virtualenv in the project before running the robot command. If we don't activate the virtualenv, the robot command will not be recognized.

.\.venv\Scripts\activate

Check the robot version

robot --version

Initialize robot browser with playwright

rfbrowser init

Command to run a test in file test.robot

robot test.robot

Add .yml file for elements

Create a new file .yml in the project folder to store the elements of the page. This file will be used to store the locator of the elements in the page. You need to install the package pyyaml to use the yaml file in the project.

poetry add pyyaml

But we need to have some code to read the yaml file and get the locator of the elements. First, we will create a new file yaml.py for using the yaml file.

• Get absolute path of the yaml file
• Load the yaml file
• Get the value of the key in the yaml file

Second,for the .py file, in test cases, we will define the library to use the yaml file with the format Library .<.py file>.<class_name>. For example:

Library .yaml.YamlUtils

And we need to add the path of the yaml file to the command to run the test cases.

--pythonpath=practice_expand_testing\common-utilities