Robotframework-FlaUI Library

License
Python Builds (x86)
Python Builds (x64)
Tests
Python
Robotframework
PyPi

Introduction

Robotframework-FlaUI is a keyword based user interface automation testing library for Windows applications like Win32, WinForms, WPF or Store Apps. It's based on the FlaUI user interface automation library.

The library supports Microsoft UI Automation interfaces UIA2 and UIA3 (default). Elements are located by XPath. Mouse keywords also accept absolute screen coordinates or X/Y offsets from an element's clickable point. Keyboard keywords can send input globally when no XPath is given.

Installation

Install the latest stable release:

pip install --upgrade robotframework-flaui

Usage

*** Settings ***
Library    FlaUILibrary    uia=UIA3    screenshot_on_failure=True    screenshot_mode=FILE    screenshot_suffix=jpg    timeout=1000

Library import arguments:

Mouse examples:

Click    ${XPATH}
Click    x=100    y=200
Click    ${XPATH}    x=10    y=20

Keyboard examples:

Press Key    t'Text'    ${XPATH}
Press Key    t'Text'
Press Keys    ${KEYS}

A full keyword reference is available in the keyword documentation.

Dependencies and python support

The robot framework FlaUI is supposed to support the current Python 3 versions.

Required dependencies

See dependencies from Documentation

Runtime dependencies are listed in requirements.txt:

• Robot Framework 3.2.2 or newer
• Python.Net 3.0.0 or newer
• robotframework-pythonlibcore
• typing-extensions

Python.Net Wrapper Issues

Robotframework-Flaui 1.x

• With the release of Python.Net version 2.5.2, Python 3.9 support was implemented for the first time.
• However, no official support for Python 3.9 has been released yet.
  • For more information see the issue #1389
• If there are problems installing the Python.Net library, please use Python 3.8 instead.
• This is only a potential problem by all robotframework-flaui 1.x versions which are implemented by Python.Net 2.5.2

Robotframework-Flaui 2.x

• Sometimes an AccessViolationException wil be occure on latest Python.Net Version v3.0.1
  • For more information see the issue #1977
  • A workaround is to set Python's memory allocation environment variable "PYTHONMALLOC=malloc"

Documentation

• Keyword documentation
• XPath explanation

Keyword HTML and XML docs are generated by libdoc.py during the build blueprint stage and published from the documentation GitHub branch to GitHub Pages.

RFHUB2

RFHUB2 is an opensource project aimed to provide nice and easy way of collecting, browsing and sharing documentation of existing keywords written in RobotFramework and python. Built with Material-UI and FastAPI, served by Uvicorn.

Keyword XML files live on the documentation branch under docs/keywords/. Check out that branch and import them with RFHUB2-CLI:

rfhub2-cli .\docs\keywords\
rfhub2-cli .\docs\keywords\<VERSION>

GUI Inspector Tools

There are various tools around which help inspecting application that should be ui tested or automated.

Some of them are:

• FlaUI Inspect
• Alternatively FlaUInspectStable more stable version
• Microsoft Accessibility Insights For Windows
• VisualUIAVerify
• Inspect
• UISpy

Examples

Examples of use can be found in the atests folder.

Development

Preconditions

• Install Python, if not already installed.
• Python 3.8 or newer is supported (CI covers 3.8–3.15, x86 and x64).

Requirement files

Dependency installation by Builddrone

Install Builddrone, then run stages from blueprint.json:

python -m pip install -r requirements-buildsystem.txt
python -m builddrone <stage>

Builddrone documentation: https://nepitwin.github.io/Builddrone/latest/

Test-Applications

Two test projects were used for the UI automation:

• FlaUI WPF Test App 'Standard application that contains all common UI elements'
• Notifier Test App 'Application which closes automatically after a time'

Testing locally TLDR

python -m venv .venv
.venv/Scripts/pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

cd ./atests
../.venv/Scripts/robot -v UIA:UIA3 -d ../result -P ../src -t "Element Should Be Offscreen" Element.robot

Building and testing with Builddrone

Local CI is defined in blueprint.json and executed by Builddrone:

python -m builddrone <stage>

Builddrone loads blueprint.json from the working directory, selects the named stage and runs its module steps in order. Relative paths are resolved from the directory that contains blueprint.json.

The build stage writes:

• Wheel and source distribution under dist/
• Keyword documentation keywords/keywords.html and keywords/keywords.xml (generated by libdoc.py)

The test stage runs atests twice (UIA2 and UIA3), merges the Robot outputs with rebot into result/, copies screenshots and converts the merged report with parsly.py.

robocop, pylint and test share .testing.venv. build uses .build.venv. pypi uses .upload.venv.

Example full local CI run:

python -m pip install -r requirements-buildsystem.txt
python -m builddrone build
python -m builddrone robocop
python -m builddrone pylint
python -m builddrone test

AppVeyor (appveyor.yml) runs the same four stages on every branch except documentation. The pypi stage runs only when the build is triggered by a git tag.

Contributing

Code changes are welcome via pull request. Release tagging, PyPI upload and keyword documentation publishing are not part of this workflow.

• add or update keywords in folders
  • src/FlaUILibrary/flaui/module
  • src/FlaUILibrary/keywords
• add or update tests in folder atests
• update CHANGELOG.md under [Unreleased]
• open a pull request against main

Acknowledgements

FlaUI

• Thanks to @Roemer for the passion to create and maintain the FlaUI project.
• Thanks to FlaUI developers and maintainers for this project.