qweb

Keyword based test automation for the web.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  • Quick Example
• Requirements
• Installation
  • Windows
  • Linux/Mac
  • Automatic browser & driver management
  • Manual driver management
• Usage
  • Keyword documentation
  • Examples
    • Basic usage
    • Shadow DOMs and visibility
    • Timeouts and anchors
    • Other locators
    • Working with tables
    • Changing configuration
    • Running with Python
• Changelog
• Contribute
• Community
• License
• Resources

Introduction

QWeb is a powerful and versatile Robot Framework library designed for efficient, reliable, and maintainable web testing and automation. Its core strength lies in an intuitive, human-readable syntax that allows teams to write and maintain even complex test cases with minimal effort.

QWeb's philosophy is to give you the best of both worlds: text-based automation for 80–90 % of cases where brittle XPath/CSS selectors aren’t needed, and precise DOM targeting for the tricky 10–20 % where they are.

QWeb aims to make web automation easy and maintainable by:

• Intuitive, human-readable syntax for writing and maintaining complex test cases.
• Smart locators: find elements by visible text or any attribute value with simple, natural syntax.
• Automatic waits: built-in retry logic in most keywords eliminates the need for explicit wait calls.
• Automatic frame handling: automatically searches across all iframes without manual frame-switching.
• Automatic alert handling: gracefully manages unexpected browser alerts.
• Shadow dom support: easily locate and interact with elements in shadow roots.
• In-built bitmap comparison: handle edge cases where no attribute or text can reliably identify an element.
• Technology agnostic: works across a wide range of web technologies and frameworks.

Quick Example

*** Settings ***
Library    QWeb

*** Test Cases ***
User Can Log In
    Open Browser    https://example.com      chrome
    Type Text       Email       [e-mail]
    Type Text       Password    changeme
    Click Text      Sign in
    Verify Text     Dashboard

See more examples.

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Requirements

Python 3.10-3.13 and Robot Framework 5.0.1 or above.

(Note that support on Macs with Apple based silicon (M1) requires MacOS version 12/Monterey or above or custom installation.)

Installation

Windows

    pip install QWeb

Linux/Mac

Some Linux distributions (Ubuntu) use snap to install browsers, which brings it's own problems with non-default binary, user data-dir and/or profile location. We suggest installing the browser via terminal, for example:

    wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
    apt-get install -y ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

Make sure the following dependencies are installed:

    sudo apt-get install python3-tk python3-dev scrot
    pip install python-xlib

    python3 -m pip install -U pip
    python3 -m pip install QWeb

Running the above command installs also supported Selenium and Robot Framework versions + other dependencies.

Automatic browser & driver management

Since Selenium 4.10.0 browser drivers can be automatically downloaded and installed using Selenium Manager, provided that driver is not found in PATH.

For Chrome browser_version can also be given; if your locally installed Chrome matches this version, it will be used. If not, a suitable version of Chrome for Testing will be automatically downloaded.

Examples in OpenBrowser keyword documentation

Manual driver management

For manual installation of drivers, please refer to Selenium documentation for more information OR use 3rd party packages like WebDriverManager.

NOTE: Manual driver management should only be used in exceptional cases. Letting Selenium Manager handle drivers is the preferred, less error prone option.

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Usage

Keyword documentation

See list of keywords and their usage on

• Keyword documentation
• Copado Robotic Testing support pages

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Examples

Basic usage

The preferred way to interact with web elements is using their text property. Most elements like input fields and dropdowns can also be found by closest label (text).

*** Settings ***
Library    QWeb     # Import library

*** Test Cases ***
Basic interaction
    OpenBrowser         https://qentinelqi.github.io/shop      chrome   # Open chrome and goto given url
    VerifyText          The animal friendly clothing company            # Assert heading text
    ClickText           Scar the Lion                                   # Click link text
    ClickText           Add to cart                                     # Click *button* with specific text
    DropDown            Size            Large                           # Select value (Large) from dropdown (Size)

Shadow DOMs and visibility

Most common cases when text or element is not found are:

• Element has (incorrectly?) some attribute set so, that it's considered invisible.
• Element is under shadow dom (i.e. has #shadow-root parent element)

QWeb searches for visible elements by default, but can be instructed to work with invisible elements as well. See keyword documentation of SetConfig and the following parameters:

• Visibility
• Offsetcheck
• InViewport

Elements under shadow DOM can not be found using xpaths. However, all *Text, *Item and *Input keywords do support extending the search to Shadow DOM elements. We intentionally keep this under separate setting for ensuring compatibility with older test cases.

Example:

*** Settings ***
Library    QWeb     # Import library

*** Test Cases ***
Click shadow dom element
  SetConfig            ShadowDOM            True  # extends search to shadow dom elements
  OpenBrowser          chrome://settings/content/popups   chrome
  ClickText            Sites can send pop-ups 

Timeouts and anchors

By default QWeb tries to locate the element 10 seconds (default time can be configured). Timeout can also be individually given for each keyword as an argument.

When text to be found is not unique, an 'anchor' argument can be given to pinpoint which instance of text we want to interact with. Anchor can be either another text nearby or index.

ClickText   Sign-in
ClickText   Sign-in     timeout=30

ClickText   Sign-in     anchor=Email
ClickText   Sign-in     index=3

Other locators

Non-textual locators can be used with ClickElementand ClickItemkeywords.

ClickElement    xpath\=//button[@class="my_class"]   # xpath
ClickItem       Increment quantity                   # alt text

Working with tables

QWeb includes keywords to interact with table data easily.

Consider the following table as an example:

UseTable    Firstname

${row}=     GetTableRow     //last                        # returns 5
${row}=     GetTableRow     //last    skip_header=True    # returns 4
...
${row}=     GetTableRow     Jim                           # returns 4
${row}=     GetTableRow     Jim    skip_header=True       # returns 3

${cell_value}=     GetCellText     r1c2                   # Returns "John", first name is column 2.

${cell_value}=     GetCellText     r-1/c2                 # Returns "Tina", -1 points to last row
${cell_value}=     GetCellText     r-2/c2                 # Returns "Jim", -2 points to second last row

Changing configuration

QWeb's behavior can be changed with SetConfig keyword.

SetConfig     SearchMode     Draw       # Highlight all found elements with blue rectangle

SetConfig     DefaultTimeout    60s     # change default/automatic timeout for all keywords
VerifyText    User account created      # Re-tries to find text "User account created" 60 seconds and then fails, if text is not visible

Running with Python

QWeb can be used directly with Python as well.

from QWeb import QWeb

qweb = QWeb()

qweb.open_browser("about:blank", "chrome")
qweb.go_to("https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_select")
title = qweb.get_title()
# returns 'W3Schools Tryit Editor'
qweb.verify_text("The select element")
qweb.drop_down("Choose a car", "Saab")
qweb.click_text("Submit")
qweb.verify_text("Your input was received as:")
qweb.verify_text("cars=saab")

More examples on QWeb tutorial.

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Changelog

See RELEASE.md

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Contribute

Found an bug? Want to propose a new feature or improve documentation? Please start by checking our contribution guide

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Community

Want to join the community at Slack? On the official Robot Framework workspace, there is a QWeb channel where you can discuss with others about keywords, issues and improvements. Join Now

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License

Apache 2.0 License. See LICENSE.

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Resources

• QWeb home page
• QWeb tutorial