How to create test site structure before each plone.app.robotframework-based test? - plone

Question

I can't find a way to having something like setUp and tearDown when running a Plone robot test.
What I need is to create a whole site structure before each test. The only way I found is to create my own new robot keyword that create the structure from the browser itself, but I don't want to test the folder creation. This will slow down my tests for nothing.
I found something promising in the robotsuite library: https://github.com/collective/robotsuite/blob/b52000c65ea96b2be697bf899829c397985fc5aa/src/robotsuite/init.py#L217
However I can't make it works: I can define an empty setUp function, with no Plone context.
How can I do this?

Answer 1

At first, you can always define your test site structure in the setup methods of your plone.app.testing based test layer. (See docs for plone.app.testing for details.)
In addition to that, there are at least a few ways to build test site structure for plone.app.robotframework based Selenium tests:
The first is passing your test setUp function as setUp-keyword argument for RobotTestSuite-class:
import unittest
import robotsuite
from plone.testing import layered
from my.package.testing import MY_PACKAGE_ROBOT_TESTING
from zope.component.hooks import getSite
from transaction import commit
def mySetUp(testCase=None):
site = getSite()
# do stuff
commit()
def test_suite():
suite = unittest.TestSuite()
suite.addTests([
layered(
robotsuite.RobotTestSuite('test_something.robot',
setUp=mySetUp),
layer=MY_PACKAGE_ROBOT_TESTING
),
])
return suite
There should be no need for explicit tearDown, because plone.app.testing's functional test teardown already reverts all changes made to the test sandbox.
This feature is based on RobotTestSuite built to mimic DocTestSuite from doctest-module. The setUp-method takes a single argument, the test case object, but because the test layer is lost somewhere in the test framework, getSite is the only sane way to reach the portal object.
Finally, it's good to know that this approach works only as long as the Robot Framework test is executed within the same process where Plone test layer is built (which is the case when executing robosuite-wrapped test suites with e.g. zope.testrunner).
The second way would be to split the setUp function into a custom local python keyword library. For example, in my/package/testing.py you could have:
from plone import api
from transaction import commit
class MyPackageKeywords(object):
def create_stuff(self, stuff_id):
portal = api.portal.get()
obj = api.content.create(
type='Document',
title='My Stuff',
container=portal
)
commit()
return obj.absolute_url()
And you should be able to use it like:
*** Settings ***
...
Library my.package.testing.MyPackageKeywords
*** Test Cases ***
...
${URL} = Create stuff stuff_id=my-stuff
Go to  ${URL}
Element should contain css=h1.documentFirstHeading My Stuff
This has the same limitation as the first approach.
The third possible way is to create the content in the actual Robot Framework test suites by using the content related remote keywords provided in the recent plone.app.robotframework releases.
In short, this is done by including REMOTE_LIBRARY_BUNDLE_FIXTURE in your test layer and using its Create content and Fire transition keywords for creating the required mock content.
import unittest
import robotsuite
from plone.app.robotframework.testing import REMOTE_LIBRARY_BUNDLE_FIXTURE
from plone.app.testing import PLONE_FIXTURE
from plone.testing import layered
from plone.testing import z2
PLONE_ACCEPTANCE_TESTING = z2.FunctionalTesting(
bases=(REMOTE_LIBRARY_BUNDLE_FIXTURE,
PLONE_FIXTURE,
z2.ZSERVER_FIXTURE),
name="Acceptance")
def test_suite():
suite = unittest.TestSuite()
suite.addTests([
layered(
robotsuite.RobotTestSuite('test_something.robot'),
layer=PLONE_ACCEPTANCE_TESTING
),
])
return suite
*** Settings ***
Resource plone/app/robotframework/keywords.robot
Resource Selenium2Screenshots/keywords.robot
Library Remote ${PLONE_URL}/RobotRemote
Test Setup Open test browser
Test Teardown Close all browsers
*** Test Cases ***
Scenario: View folder contents
Given a contributor
and a folder
and a document inside the folder
when at the folder listing
then can see the document title
*** Variables ***
${FOLDER_ID} a-folder
${DOCUMENT_ID} a-document
*** Keywords ***
A contributor
Enable autologin as Contributor
A folder
Create content type=Folder
... id=${FOLDER_ID}
... title=A folder
... description=This is the folder
A document inside the folder
Create content type=Document
... container=/${PLONE_SITE_ID}/${FOLDER_ID}
... id=${DOCUMENT_ID}
... title=A document
... description=This is the document
... text=<p><strong>Hello world!</strong></p>
At the folder listing
Go to ${PLONE_URL}/${FOLDER_ID}/folder_contents
Element should be visible name=folderContentsForm
Can see the document title
Page should contain A document
Capture and crop page screenshot folder-contents.png css=#content
Plese note, that Create content -keyword may also require use of Enable autologin as -keyword to authenticate the content creation calls. Also note, that Capture and crop page screenshot is nowadays in a separate package robotframework-selenium2screenshots.
Content creation keywords are not yet perfect and issues may be reported at GitHub. You can also implement your own remote python keywords. They are just methods in simple python classes, which is wrapped into REMOTE_LIBRARY_BUNDLE_FIXTURE.
Finally, see also the good known versions for plone.app.robotframework and friends.