I want start Desktop based application Testing in Robot Framework.Application is developed in C++ .
Do i need to install RIDE to start scripting or some other application is needed for start writing script for desktop based application?
You just need a text editor to create .robot and .resource files. Then use the command robot to run the tests. Of course, IDEs makes easier to autocomplete content, organize files and run the tests (but it is always robot the engine).
I am the current maintainer of RIDE, and it has no specific tools to create tests for compiled executables. For these kind of apps, I use computer vision libraries, like SikuliLibrary and ImageHorizonLibrary. These libraries expect to have images of the interable elements of the application, to perform the actions as the user would do.
Newest RIDE (2.2.2) has a feature to install known libraries, like the ones I mentioned.
If you need assistance, I am most of the time available, here, and at our Slack.
Of course, if you prefer, (or even, if your team or company mandates) a different IDE, there is Visual Studio Core (or Visual Studio Codium), and PyCharm. They use a plugin named RobotCode, with many nice features.
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Hi @Shweta ,
Welcome to the Robot Framework community,
As Hélio said you just need a text editor, any text editor will work, I’ve even used Windows Notepad and nano on Unix to create simple robot files, but I don’t recommend that especially for people new to Robot Framework as you’ll miss out on nice things like syntax highlighting, auto completion, error highlighting etc. don’t make you life harder than it needs to be.
As for testing a C++ based Desktop application, there are quite a few libraries that can help you, e.g. if you are on Windows there are libraries like FlaUI and AutoIT that might make life easier than SikuliLibrary and ImageHorizonLibrary, there is also a new library called PlatynUI which is in development but might be worth a try if your application is “Accessible“ (This library uses the same API’s as screen readers that vision impaired people use to navigate a computer).
The important thing to understand is Robot Framework on it’s own doesn’t interact with the application, it just provides the keyword driven framework, you install the keyword libraries you need for your application and those keyword libraries perform actions on or interact with your application, you can use as many or few libraries as you need, depending on what you need to test.
Hope that helps,
Dave.
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Knowing what ui framework is used in the app, will help you picking the right tool (in addition to robot framework itself).
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