I was really excited to hear that there was a new Applitools EyesLibrary. Being a Robot Framework Coach and Mentor I was really excited to see that this new library come out. I have been working with several people on older versions of Applitools EyesLibrary for Robot Framework. But with the recent updates to Robot Framework and Applitools these were in the state of needing repair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here I am going to take you through my first insight or exploration into the new EyesLibrary and provide you with a short tutorial which you can follow along, gaining a good introduction to the new EyesLibrary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For those not familiar with Robot Framework<\/a> it is a natural language, keyword based, testing framework. That means instead of reading as a syntactic programming language it reads like a testing story. My test might read like \u201cNavigate To The Home Page\u201d, \u201cEdit The User\u2019s Preferences\u201d, \u201cAdd Applitools To My Skill Set\u201d, \u201cVerify Applitools Is In My User Profile\u201d, \u201cPerform Visual Check Of User Profile Ignore Newly Added Skills\u201d etc. And being a framework means that it can be applied to many different areas, like visual testing. This is done through Libraries which provide a set of task specific keywords. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here I am going to talk about Applitools EyesLibrary, which is a library for performing visual testing using Applitools with Robot Framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coming from the Robot Framework side the first thing I wanted to do was go look at the keyword documentation for the library<\/a>. I was curious to see what keywords were there and what I could do with the library. The first thing I noticed was the large number of keywords; much larger than I expected. Luckily I could use the tag filtering so I could filter out the keywords based upon categories. From the categories I can start to see there were keywords for visual checks, targeting parts of the screen, some configuration, and something called ultrafast grid (which I won\u2019t cover in this article).<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can get started with a free Applitools account today and follow along with this tutorial.<\/p>\n Get My Free Account<\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Taking a step back I decided to go review the documentation for Applitools. There is \u201cOverview of visual UI testing\u201d<\/a> which really outlines what is visual testing and what are the steps in the process of visual testing. I felt I had these concepts pretty well understood in my mind. To get to the answer of how do I use the EyesLibrary to do visual testing I found the Robot Eyes Library sdk\/api documentation key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Robot Eyes Library documentation<\/a> under the SDK section really outlines the \u201chow\u201d whereas the keyword documentation gives us the \u201cwhat\u201d and Overview\/The Core Concepts gives us the \u201cwhy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201chow\u201d, what we need in our robot scripts, really just breaks down to this: one most open their eyes, perform a visual check on a region maybe with some special configurations, and then close one’s eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s start by setting up our environment. You will need Python (version 3.6 or greater, I recommend Python 3.8) installed on your system. The setup involves installing and initializing the library and then setting your API key. To simplify setup, I\u2019ve created a script, For my first script, I wanted to do something simple – perform a visual check on the demo page without changing anything<\/strong>. Essentially I wanted a very simple passing test to validate everything was set up properly and to start to explore. Here it is:<\/p>\n\n\n\nDive into the Applitools Library for Robot Framework<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Get started with Applitools today<\/h4>\n
Sign up for your free account<\/h3>\n
Documentation Is Key to Understanding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Setting up my Environment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
setup_eyes.bat<\/a><\/code> for Windows or setup_eyes.sh<\/a><\/code> for Linux. Run the corresponding batch file or bash script at the command line or terminal prompt. It will ask you for your Applitools API Key so have that handy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMy First Test<\/h2>\n\n\n\n