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Integrate Your Test Suite with BrowserStack

BrowserStack Robot SDK supports a plug-and-play integration. Run your entire test suite in parallel with a few steps!

Prerequisites

  • An existing automated test suite.
  • Robot V5+, Python3 and Pip3 is installed on your machine.

Looking for a starter project? Get started with our Robot sample project.

Integration Steps

Complete the following steps to integrate your Robot test suite using BrowserStack SDK.

Set BrowserStack credentials

Saving your BrowserStack credentials as environment variables makes it simple to run your test suite from your local or CI environment.

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Install BrowserStack Robot SDK

Execute the following commands to install BrowserStack Robot SDK for plug-and-play integration of your test suite with BrowserStack.

python3 -m pip install browserstack-sdk
browserstack-sdk setup --framework "robot" --username "YOUR_USERNAME" --key "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY"
python3 -m pip install browserstack-sdk
browserstack-sdk setup --framework "robot" --username "YOUR_USERNAME" --key "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY"
Unable to install BrowserStack SDK?

If you can’t install BrowserStack SDK due to sudo privilege issues, create a virtual environment and execute the adjacent installation commands again.

Mac OS or Linux:
python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate

Windows
python3 -m venv env
env\Scripts\activate

Create your BrowserStack config file

Once you have installed the SDK, create a browserstack.yml config file at the root level of your project. This file holds all the required capabilities to run tests on BrowserStack.

Set platforms to test on

Set the browsers/devices you want to test under the platforms object. Our config follows W3C formatted capabilities.

Parallel thread #1
Parallel thread #2
Parallel thread #3
Do you want to dynamically configure platforms?

To dynamically configure platforms across different tests, you can comment out the platforms capability while still passing platform-specific capabilities.

Set number of parallel threads per platform

The parallelsPerPlatform property determines the number of parallel threads to be executed. BrowserStack’s SDK runner will select the best strategy based on the configured value.

Example 1: If you have configured 3 platforms and set parallelsPerPlatform as 2: a total of 6 (3 x 2) parallel threads will be used on BrowserStack.

Example 2: If you have configured 1 platform and set parallelsPerPlatform as 15: a total of 15 (1 x 15) parallel threads will be used on BrowserStack.

Do you want to perform cross-browser testing without test level parallelization?

Remove the parallelsPerPlatform capability from the configuration file.

Do you want to test parallelization without performing cross-browser testing?

Remove or comment out the platform capability while keeping the parallelsPerPlatform capability intact in the configuration file.

Do you want to skip cross-browser testing as well as parallelization?

Remove or comment out the platform and parallelsPerPlatform capabilities from the configuration file.

Enable BrowserStack Local

Test localhost/internal servers in your network

True
False
Test Localhost/Staging websites that are not publicly accessible

BrowserStack Local Testing feature connects with test suites that test your localhost URL

Learn more

If your staging environment is behind a proxy or firewall, additional arguments, such as proxy username, proxy password, etc, must be set. Check out Local Binary parameters to learn about additional arguments or Contact Support for assistance.

BrowserStack Reporting

You can leverage BrowserStack’s extensive reporting features using the following capabilities:

Build Name

Set a name to your build (usually the same as the build ID that’s on your CI/CD platform).
Accepted characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, ., :, -, [], /, @, &, ', _. All other characters are ignored.
Character limit: 255

buildIdentifier Description Generated build name on BrowserStack dashboard
${BUILD_NUMBER} (Default) If build is triggered locally, an incremental counter is appended.

If build is triggered with CI tools, CI generated build number is appended.
bstack-demo 1


bstack-demo CI 1395
${DATE_TIME} The timestamp of run time is appended to the build. bstack-demo 29-Nov-20:44
Advanced use cases for Build Names

Custom formatting of Build Name

Prefix buildIdentifier with desired characters, for example # or :

buildName: bstack-demo
buildIdentifier: '#${BUILD_NUMBER}'

Re-run tests in a build

You can re-run selected tests from a build using any of the following options:

Option 1: Set the existing build name in the BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME variable and prepend it to your test run command to re-run tests in the same build:

MacOS/Linux:

BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME=“bstack-demo 123” browserstack-sdk robot ./tests/test-*.robot

Windows Powershell:

$env:BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME=“bstack-demo 123”; browserstack-sdk robot ./tests/test-*.robot

Windows cmd:

set BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME=“bstack-demo 123” && browserstack-sdk robot ./tests/test-*.robot


Option 2: Set the build name as a combination of buildName and buildIdentifier, as seen on the dashboard, and set buildIdenitifier as null:

buildName: bstack-demo 123
buildIdentifier: null


Option 3: Set the buildIdentifier as the build number or time of the required build as seen on the dashboard:

buildName: bstack-demo
buildIdentifier: 123


Project Name

Set a project name for your project

Do you want to enable/disable auto-marking of test status and session?

The sessionName and sessionStatus are the names of your test sessions and status of your test sessions respectively. They are automatically picked from your test class/spec names and statuses. They do not need to be set manually when using the BrowserStack SDK. To override the sessionName and sessionStatus capabilities, use the following in your browserstack.yml file:

You can configure local testing to start without initializing the BrowserStack binary, or even with an existing binary using a local identifier

testContextOptions:
    skipSessionName: true
    skipSessionStatus: true

Use additional debugging features

By default, BrowserStack provides prettified session logs, screenshots on every failed selenium command, and a video of the entire test. Additionally, you can enable the following features:

Test Observability

Enables Test Observability, an advanced test reporting and debugging tool that helps you analyze test failures dramatically faster. If enabled, Test Observability collects test data using the SDK. This capability is enabled (set to true) by default.

True
False
Network logs

Enables network capture for the session in HAR format. Might reduce session performance slightly

True
False

Create browserstack.yml file

Copy the following code snippet and create browserstack.yml file in the root folder of your test suite.

browserstack.yml
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Use our Capability Generator to select from a comprehensive set of options you can use to customize your tests.

Run your test suite

Prepend browserstack-sdk before your existing run commands to execute your tests on BrowserStack using the Robot SDK.

Before
robot <path-to-test-files>

After
browserstack-sdk robot <path-to-test-files>


To find out the location of the BrowserStack SDK log files, refer to BrowserStack SDK Log Files. If you are looking for more information, see FAQ documentation.

After you run your test, visit the Automate dashboard to view your test results.

Advanced features and use cases

Here’s a list of features and capabilities you may find useful.

Accept insecure certificates

The acceptInsecureCerts capability suppresses browser popups warning about self-signed certificates usually found in staging environments.

Capability Expected values
acceptInsecureCerts A boolean. Default is False.
True if you want to accept all SSL certificates.
browserstack.yml

Change desktop resolution

The resolution capability changes the default desktop screen resolution for your tests on BrowserStack.

Capability Description Expected values
resolution Set the resolution of your VM before beginning your test A string. Default resolution is 1024x768

Supported resolutions:
Windows (XP, 7): 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1366x768, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 1920x1080, and 2048x1536

Windows (8, 8.1, 10): 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1366x768, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 1920x1080, and 2048x1536

OS X (Sequoia, Sonoma, Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra): 1024x768, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 2560x1600, and 3840x2160

OS X (All other versions): 1024x768, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, and 1920x1080

Others

Below are few of the additional links to documentation pages that might help with your test scenarios:

Next steps

Once you have successfully integrated your test suite with BrowserStack, you might want to check the following:

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