From time to time PacktPub will request a book review of one of their Python-related titles. This time around it was regarding their “Robot Framework Test Automation” book they recently released. Since I’ve been using this awesome acceptance testing tool at work for more than two years, I was happy to comply.
In a nutshell, Robot Framework provides a great interface that acts as the middle-man between variour stakeholders. Indeed, tests are written in plain text (though other formats are supported, I never use them) with a rather minimal set of rules making it (almost) straightforward to read even by non-technical persons. The dirty technical details being hidden away and implemented in Python and executable in one of the various Python VM (CPython, Jython, IronPython are supported out of the box).
Most of the time, the basics of the Robot Framework data model and workflow can be taught in a couple of hours. However, being efficient with it will take a little more time. Still, people don’t have to learn a complete programming language (Python) itself and that’s a relief meaning they are happy to work with Robot Framework sometimes cumbersome syntax.
In spite of having a rather extensive documentation available online, the project did lack a good, straight to the point summary that takes you by the hand. Moreover, the documentation’s style of the project is fairly dry and Unix-style making it tedious to browse sometimes. Still, the content is there and it rarely failed me. With that said, having a friendly book on the subject is a great thing. Kudos to PacktPub. Now about the book…
The good
The book provides an introduction to the tool, its most common usages and even tries to guide you getting more from it. It’s a short book, 83 pages, that will not bore you with complex details. In other words, it’s a good companion of the online documentation if you start with Robot Framework.
Sumit Bisht, the author, does a good job keeping a neutral point of view in regards to how you should use Robot Framework. Indeed, depending on your software under test, you might want to have a more data-oriented approach (ala fitness), a behavior-driven testing approach or even a more assert-oriented style. Not many software can deal with all of them equally and it depends also on how testing is perceived in your organisation. Robot Framework can cope with all of them.
The bad
Though I could understand it’s only an introduction, it feels like some concepts are not properly explored. The idea behind keywords, the internal data model, dynamic libraries, etc. In other words, you will not really understand the underlying blocks and axioms that are the pedestal of the whole tool, you’ll rather learn the basics of using it. In fact, the only section where the book goes into more technical details (with a good example on using sikuli) will probably confuse you since it failed to properly introduce the principles behind them.
The ugly
There isn’t anything particulary that bad with this book, again it should be considered as a friendly introduction. I do not agree with a few minor points Sumit makes but they hardly matter and aren’t wrong anyway, just a matter of opinion. Note also that the book lacks examples a couple of times where it would have mattered but I don’t believe this makes the book any less useful.
The only thing that annoys me really is that PacktPub book’s layout still looks so unprofesionnal. They should really make an effort as the code is, most of the time, too hard to read (actually on this one item, it wasn’t that bad).
Final note
I think this book is ideal if you are about to start with Robot Framework as it will speed up the basics. If you’re already used to the tool, I am not sure it will help very much.