Can I use robot framework for the reporting without having to create the testcase.txt files?

Question

I have a lot of Java test cases I have written in pure java. I then use testng and ant to run through the test cases and report out an xml file providing testcases that pass and failed and test suites and so forth. In this scenario testng is essentially the framework, and provides very little flexibility.

I have read up on Robot Framework, still very new to it, and would like to move our testing model to a acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development. And it looks like robot framework supports a english-written-testcase.txt and turns it into an actual test it runs, and reports back the result in an output.xml type of file.

So, I was wondering is there any way, for robot framework to handle just the code the .java files and run through the testcases without, me having to go back and write .txt files in order to kick off the testcases.

And afterwards have it report back with some sort of output.xml report.

Basically, I need the ability to keep things working as currently, but at the same time allow me to slowly transition to the testcase.txt file model that robot framework can offer.

Answer 1

Robot Framework does have tool called rebot which lets you create report from multiple output.xml files, but I think that TestNG provides only xUnit like XML file which is not the same so rebot is no good here.

Depending on how many tests you currently have in TestNG, I would either let Robot Framework launch the TestNG tests, parse the result file and mark a test passed if there are no fails in the result file. Or let the RF tests assume that the result file from TestNG run is available in certain place before RF tests start, and then create one light test for each TestNG test. Each of those tests would only check from the TestNG result file did the corresponding test pass or not, and then pass or fail the RF test.

Answer 2

Robot Framework to me is primarily a high-level scripting platform, with a little reporting thrown in. Use something like Bamboo to aggregate the jUnit.XML results from the old framework along with your new Robot Framework test results.