Robot Framework BrowserBatteries

Robot Framework BrowserBatteries is Python package which contains the NodeJS runtime and all the required NodeJS dependencies, distributed inside of the Python wheel. The only thing user needs to do, is to install the Playwright browser binaries and then run tests.

Installation

1. Update pip pip install -U pip to ensure latest version is used
2. Install robotframework-browser and robotframework-browser-batteries from the commandline: pip install robotframework-browser[bb]
3. Install the Playwright browser binaries, run: rfbrowser install

• if rfbrowser is not found, try python -m Browser.entry install

NOTE: You can skip rfbrowser install if you want to use preinstalled browser, like Chrome or Edge. Any Chromium based browser should be OK to go.

Update instructions

To upgrade your already installed robotframework-browser and robotframework-browser-batteries in follow steps below. Please note that robotframework-browser and robotframework-browser-batteries packages are tied together and having different versions of these packages is not supported.

1. Update from commandline: pip install -U robotframework-browser robotframework-browser-batteries
2. Clean old node side dependencies and browser binaries: rfbrowser clean-node
3. Install the node dependencies for the newly installed version: rfbrowser install

Purpose

When using BrowserBatteries package, user can skip NodeJS installation and does not need to install the NodeJS dependencies, like Playwright and GRPC. The wheel contains a NodeJS 24 runtime together with those dependencies, and a wheel is published for each of these platforms:

The minimum versions are the ones the official NodeJS 24 builds require, and the wheels are tagged accordingly, so pip will not install BrowserBatteries on a platform where the shipped NodeJS cannot start. On an older platform, install plain robotframework-browser and provide NodeJS yourself.

The NodeJS runtime is the official build from nodejs.org, verified against its published checksums at build time and shipped unmodified next to the library's own NodeJS sources. This is the same arrangement Playwright uses for its Python, Java and .NET packages, which means Playwright runs on the NodeJS it is developed and tested against.

Browser Batteries purpose

BrowserBatteries does not provide extra keywords or functionally on keywords or replace existing plugins or extensions. BrowserBatteries sole purpose is to ease installation, specially in corporate networks. But it can be used by anyone, example if you do not have access public internet you can download the wheels, example with pip download robotframework-browser-batteries, copy wheels to you target computer, install wheels on your target computer and use any Chromium based browser to run your tests.