Python Environment Setup

Binaries of the latest version of python 3  are available on its official site.


For Windows:

You need to download the .zip file and extract it locally, It can be x86 or x64 depending on your operating system.

Following options available for that.

Windows x86-64 embeddable zip file

Windows x86 executable installer
Windows x86 web-based installer
Windows x86-64 executable installer
Windows x86-64 web-based installer
Windows x86 embeddable zip file


Double-click on the installer file and follow simple instructions.


Setting up PATH :

Executable files can be in many directories, so OS provides search path that lists the directories that OS looks for it.

You can set PATH from command line also, like go to command line and 
type path %path%;C:\[Python folder name] and press Enter.

The other way of doing this is to go to environment variable setup page and add the location of python dir to PATH variable.

Now go to command prompt and type python --version, you should get a version of python as the result.

For Linux:

For Linux, there are different types of that, and each flavor uses different package managers.

On ubuntu, python 3 can be downloaded using the following command.

$sudo apt-get install python3-minimal

Setting path Linux:

For csh shell: type setenv PATH "$PATH:/usr/local/bin/python3"

For bash shell (Linux): type export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/bin/python3

Installing Robot Framework with Python(an interpreter) using 'Selenium2Library' as library

What is Robot Framework: It is  Python based, extensible keyword-driven test automation framework for end to end acceptance testing.

It also known for acceptance-test-driven development(ATDD).

Though apart from Python we can use other interpreter also like Jython(JVM) , IronPython(.Net).

As Python 3.x is not yet supported with Robot Framework, we must use Python version 2.7.X or 2.5.X base version. click here to download python.

After downloading python install it by following simple wizard.

Now, set environment variable(PATH) (1) add location of installation directory of interpreter(e.g. C:\Python27)  

(2) add location of scripts are installed(e.g. C:\Pyhton27\Scripts).

Edit path variable and add above mentioned value.

To validate installation go to Command Prompt and type python and hit enter. It should enter in to Python mode with some info.

Now install the 'pip' which is standard Python package manager which makes the installation easy.

Note: We must install 'pip'  to execute below mentioned command click here to see installation steps.

Once we have 'pip' installed, open command prompt and run following command.

pip install robotframework

It will install all required files and can be see in Scripts directory of Pyhton.

Now we will install Selenium2Library. open command prompt and run following command.

pip install robotframework-selenium2library

Once it completes installation we are ready to go with Robot Framework.

Refer my post Integrate Robot Framework with Eclipse to start writing and executing your scripts on eclipse.

How to install RIDE Editor for Robot Framework on windows

RIDE  editor is used to write and execute test suite for Robot Framework.

It is GUI tool which allows user to write test cases using template base and script. User can choose either ways to write cases.

RIDE only runs on regular Python. It does not run on Jython or IronPython. 

Precondition

• Python
• Robot Framework
• wxPython - RDIE's GUI is implemented using wxPython toolkit.

Note: We must use wxPython2.8-win64-unicode-2.8.12.1-py27 if using win64 bit otherwise it will throw an error.

You can Refer my post to know more about Python and Robot Framework installation.

RIDE is distributed as separate installation packages for windows.

Click here to download RIDE packages. 

OR

You can also install RIDE using pip. Click here to know about installation of pip in python.

Open command prompt and navigate to bin directory and run command:

 pip install robotframework-ride


After successful installation of RIDE, it can be started from command like by running ride.py .

                                         OR
Extract zip file of RIDE which you downloaded, go to src/bin and copy ride.py to src

Go to command prompt and go to directory of RIDE editor/src and run python ride.py

In both way It should launch RIDE editor.

Installing pip(Python package manager)

'pip'  is consider best package manager for python. It makes the installation easy for user.

Here are the steps to install pip. Before we install pip Python must be installed in system.

Note: PATH variable must be set for python. 

Refer my post  Installing Robot Framework with Python(an interpreter) using 'Selenium2Library' as library for more information on setting PATH variable and more information.

Go to https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py and copy all content of this page to one file in local system and name it as 'get-pip.py'.
.py is python extension.

Now open command prompt and navigate to the folder where get-pip.py file is located.

e.g. d:\pip\

Run following command: python get-pip.py

It will install all required file for pip and we are ready to go with smooth installation.

Integrate Robot Framework with Eclipse

Robot Framework generally use RIDE tool for automating cases, but it happens that many users of Eclipse tool does not like other tool to use.

Here are the few simple steps to integrate Robot Framework with Eclipse:

In order to use Robot Framework we need to install python in system and then have Robot Framework installed.

Refer my post Installing Robot Framework with Python(an interpreter) using 'Selenium2Library' as library to know about Python installation.

Note: Though we can use many scripting language with Robot Framework  like Jython(Java) IronPython(.net platform) etc. but we are considering python in this article.

Get the Eclipse and start it, It should be compatible with Operating system.

Now go to Eclipse  Run menu and select External Tool option and select sub menu named "External Tool Configurations".

Clicking on External Tools Configuration will open one window. Select Program option.

Now It will open new program configuration form. Give any name to this configuration.

Under location field we will give path of pybot.bat file(You can find pybot file in script folder in python directory).

For "Working directory field" select you working directory.

For "Arguments" field give ${selected_resource_loc} as argument.

Now click on apply button and we are ready to run Robot file in eclipse.

To verify go to run configuration menu and click on it.

You will see pybot option added to the list. Now select any test suit and click on pybot option.

It will start executing the suit you are running.

-- Please drop your comments below if you have any query regarding information I have mentioned here.