How to run test cases as part of suite setup?

Question

I am using robotframework to run bunch of python functions as test cases. I tagged bunch of test cases as setup and bunch of test cases as cleanup. I use -i option in robot to run various tests cases. Typically I run -i setup for setting up and -i cleanup to clean up the test suite. However, if a test case in setup fails , all the test cases are still executed. I am looking for an ability to mark bunch of test cases as suite setup and suite teardown, and run suite teardown if suite setup fails automatically without running any test cases in between. I tried the Suite Setup with keywords option, but with that I am moving my test cases to keywords section and I am loosing the tags functionality.

Original robot file

*** Settings ***

Suite Setup
Suite Teardown

*** Test Cases ***

setup_1
    [Tags]    setup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestSetup.test_setup_1
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
setup_2
    [Tags]    setup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestSetup.test_setup_2
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
setup_3
    [Tags]    setup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestSetup.test_setup_3
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}

TestCase 1
    [Tags]      tc
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.my_func.test_func_1
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
TestCase 2
    [Tags]      tc
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.my_func.test_func_2
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}

cleanup_1
    [Tags]    cleanup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestCleanup.test_cleanup_1
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
cleanup_2
    [Tags]    cleanup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestCleanup.test_cleanup_2
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}

Robot file with keywords

*** Settings ***
Suite Setup     Run keywords
...     setup_1
...     AND setup_2
...     AND setup_3

Suite Teardown  Run keywords
...     cleanup_1
...     AND cleanup_2

*** Keywords ***
setup_1
    [Tags]    setup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestSetup.test_setup_1
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
setup_2
    [Tags]    setup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestSetup.test_setup_2
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
setup_3
    [Tags]    setup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestSetup.test_setup_3
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}

cleanup_1
    [Tags]    cleanup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =  test.test.TestCleanup.test_cleanup_1
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
cleanup_2
    [Tags]    cleanup    smoke    1
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.TestCleanup.test_cleanup_2
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}

*** Test Cases ***
TestCase 1
    [Tags]      tc
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.my_func.test_func_1
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}
TestCase 2
    [Tags]      tc
    ${result}   ${result_str} =     test.test.my_func.test_func_2
    Should Be Equal  ${result}  ${TRUE}

Is there any way to mark tests that are tagged with setup as Suite Setup and mark tests that are tagged with cleanup as Suite Teardown and still have an ability to run individual tests in setup and teardown?

You don't lose the tags functionality in Keywords section. Why are including the setup and tear-down in the test cases section? What exactly are you trying to achieve by doing this? Are the keywords in the setup and tear-down also test cases that you want to execute? — Sameem
We have distributed system that contains various nodes and they need to configured as part of setup. So we created multiple test cases as part of setup, each test case catered towards configuring a node. This is particularly helpful if a node configuration fails, we could just re-run that test case using -i <test case name>. Yes, keywords in setup and tear down are also test cases. — Santosh

Bryan Oakley Bryan Oakley · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-06T21:29:43

How to run test cases as part of suite setup?

You can't. Test cases aren't something you can explicitly call from something else.

If you're creating a reusable component that needs to run in a suite setup, it needs to be a user keyword rather than a test case.

If you want an entire suite to stop running when a single test case fails, you can use the -X/--exitonfailure command line option. Another option would be to create a test teardown that calls the built-in keyword Fatal error

How to run test cases as part of suite setup?

2 Answers