Robot Framework and Apache Ant

This tutorial is meant to show how easy you can use Robot Framework with Apache Ant. You can use later the build file for example with Jenkins.

Preconditions

Instructions

My folder structure looks like this:

Project structure

Within the folder “report” all logs and reports should be stored. Inside the folder “testsuite” are all Robot Framework files. The “build.xml” looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="RobotFramework" basedir="." default="run">
	<description>
		Simple Apache Ant example for running RobotFramework
	</description>
	
	<property name="suite.dir" location="testsuite" />
	<property name="docs.dir" location="report" />
	
	<!-- set time -->
	<target name="init">
		<tstamp>
			<format property="TODAY_DE" pattern="dd.MMMM.yyyy" locale="de" />
		</tstamp>
	</target>
	
	<!-- delete docs.dir -->
	<target name="clean" depends="init">
		<delete dir="${docs.dir}" />
	</target>
	
	<!-- create docs.dir -->
	<target name="setup" depends="clean">
		<mkdir dir="${docs.dir}" />
	</target>
	
	<!-- running testsuite -->
	<target name="run" depends="setup">
		<echo message="${TODAY_DE}" />
		<exec executable="pybot">
			<arg line="-d ${docs.dir}" />
			<arg value="${suite.dir}" />
		</exec>
	</target>
	
</project>

The content of the build.xml is self-explanatory. Now opening a terminal and run Apache Ant.

# direct on folder simple type ant
$ ant

# you can specify the build file
$ ant -buildfile build.xml

# you can specify the target
$ ant run