Automatic failing/non-execution of interdependent tests in Robot Framework

Question

If say I've a 100 test cases to run in which test case no 24, 38 and 99 are interdependent. Then is it possible that while the 99th test case is getting executed you find out the status of a previously executed test case (say the 24th or 38th test case)? In my case, the 99th test case depends on the status of the 38th and the 24th test case and thus, if either the 24th or the 38th fails I would like the 99th test case NOT to get executed at all and thus save me a lot of time. Kindly, explain with some example if possible. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Once robot starts running, there's no way to skip a test based on some condition. I think this is one of the weaknesses of robot, but the designers really don't seem to like the notion of skipped tests. Also, there's no built-in way for one test to depend on another. A feature request for this very feature was declined.

However, robot is very extensible, and a feature that was introduced in version 2.8.5 makes it easy to write a keyword that will fail if another test has failed.This feature is the ability for a library to act as a listener. With this, a library can keep track of the pass/fail status of each test. With that knowledge, you can create a keyword that fails immediately if some other test fails.

The basic idea is, cache the pass/fail status as each test finishes (via the special _end_test method). Then, use this value to determine whether to fail immediately or not.

Here's an example of how to use such a keyword:

*** Settings ***
| Library | /path/to/DependencyLibrary.py

*** Test Cases ***
| Example of a failing test
| | fail | this test has failed

| Example of a dependent test
| | [Setup] | Require test case | Example of a failing test
| | log | hello, world

Here is the library definition:

from robot.libraries.BuiltIn import BuiltIn

class DependencyLibrary(object):
    ROBOT_LISTENER_API_VERSION = 2
    ROBOT_LIBRARY_SCOPE = "GLOBAL"

    def __init__(self):
        self.ROBOT_LIBRARY_LISTENER = self
        self.test_status = {}

    def require_test_case(self, name):
        key = name.lower()
        if (key not in self.test_status):
            BuiltIn().fail("required test case can't be found: '%s'" % name)

        if (self.test_status[key] != "PASS"):
            BuiltIn().fail("required test case failed: '%s'" % name)

        return True

    def _end_test(self, name, attrs):
        self.test_status[name.lower()] = attrs["status"]

Answer 2

To solve this problem I'm using something like this:

Run Keyword if  '${PREV TEST STATUS}'=='PASSED'  myKeyword

so maybe this will be usable also for you.