How to Read Web Console Output with Robot Framework and Selenium

Описание: Discover a step-by-step approach to effectively capture and read web console output using Robot Framework and Selenium. Learn to log AJAX calls seamlessly!
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/66245723/ asked by the user 'Anna Ramolini' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/15212309/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/66264231/ provided by the user 'Bence Kaulics' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/3820025/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Read Web Console Output with Robot Framework and Selenium

When working on web testing automation with Robot Framework and Selenium, you might find yourself in a scenario where you need to capture the console output of a webpage. This includes logging important network activities such as POST, GET, and PUT AJAX calls. If you're struggling to read the console output from your web application—don’t worry! In this guide, we'll walk through an effective solution to achieve this seamlessly using Robot Framework.

Understanding the Problem

You’ve written a Python script that attempts to read the browser console logs, but you're encountering difficulties. Specifically, after performing certain actions on a webpage, the script returns an empty message despite the console containing output.

Your Current Approach:

You enable browser logging capabilities.

You retrieve the instance of the Selenium webdriver.

You call a function to fetch log entries from the browser console.

Why It’s Not Working:

The issue often lies in how the logging capabilities are set up or how the webdriver retrieves the logs. The solution involves making sure you configure the capabilities correctly and utilize Robot Framework keywords efficiently.

The Solution

We'll simplify the process using entirely Robot Framework, requiring no additional libraries. Below are the organized steps and the corresponding Robot Framework code to enable console logging in your tests.

Step 1: Set Up Browser Capabilities

Start by defining the correct logging capabilities for the Chrome browser. You need to make sure that logging is enabled correctly.

Step 2: Retrieve Webdriver Instance

Use the Get Library Instance keyword to retrieve the active webdriver after your operations.

Step 3: Fetch Console Logs

Call the get_log('browser') method on the webdriver instance to obtain the desired logging information.

Robot Framework Code

Here’s how you can implement the solution:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Code Components:

Settings Section: Imports the SeleniumLibrary that provides the necessary keywords for browser operations.

Variables Section: Sets the browser capabilities where logging of all types is enabled.

Test Cases Section:

Opens the specified webpage in Chrome with the desired capabilities.

Calls the keyword Get Browser Console Log Entries to fetch log messages and logs the entries.

Closes all browsers in the teardown step to ensure resources are released.

Keywords Section:

Fetches the active webdriver and uses the get_log to read the browser logs.

Conclusion

By following this structured approach, you can easily pull the console logs from the browser while utilizing Robot Framework and Selenium. This functionality is particularly useful for monitoring AJAX calls and ensuring your web application behaves as expected during testing.

Implement this solution in your automation workflow and say goodbye to the frustration of empty log messages!