Switching from Robot Framework to Python

This page outlines the tasks to follow when switching from Robot Framework to Python in writing your automations, as well as tips and links to relevant resources. If you are at all familiar with Python, the change is simple!

• Complete the Python automation certification courses to gain an overview of the platform.
• Update to the latest version of the Robocorp Code extension, and familiarise yourself with the new browser and Windows inspector tooling. Start e.g. with the videos on Browser Inspector and Windows Inspector.
• Adopt the Python project templates instead of Robot Framework templates.
• The project structure remains unchanged, just that instead of .robot files, you'll only have .py files.
• There are no changes in Control Room, or in how you are managing your automation workflows or their outputs.

Here are some pointers for the biggest differences:

👉 When configuring tasks in robot.yaml the tasks commands are slightly different but simpler. For example this would run all tasks from tasks.py file:

👉 Add robocorp library to the dependencies in conda.yaml to leverage all the functionality of our platform in Python. For example, this will bring the loved Task logging to Python automations.

👉 Inside your Python file use @task -decorator to declare your tasks. This also adds the logging so you'll get a comprehensive log.html report, just like in Robot Framework. So for everything you had under *** Tasks *** in your Robot Framework bots, you'll need a @task in Python. Control Room treats these two things alike, so no changes are needed on that side.

👉 For those accustomed to the keyword syntax of Robot Framework, we have good news! They all work the same way, just with a bit of changes in the names. All the keywords of RPA Framework libraries work the same way, just with this small difference: If you had Read Worksheet As Table before, in Python it will be read_worksheet_as_table. For defining custom keywords the same logic applies! Instead of under *** Keywords *** creating a keyword Fill and submit the form, you now just create Python method for example like this: def fill_and_submit_form(row):.

👉 The basic control structures and variable references of Robot Framework are all available in Python, and should not be a problem for anyone with a little bit of background in Python. In all fairness, getting the string conditiionals right with Python is so much easier than it used to be! 😎

👉 For the core functionality of Robocorp platform (Vault, Asset Storage, Work Items), we've introduced Python-only libraries under robocorp namespace. We recommend using them, as the developer experience in Python is much smoother! Check out the example bots in Portal for reference.

👉 Check the recommendations for automation library usage and the library mappings table below on which libraries to use for your use cases. We keep on updating the table, so refer back often.

👉 Use ReMark to help! Remember to describe your desired outputs in detail, and give small enough snippets to ocnvert at once.

Development recommendation

The following table lists all current RPA Framework and commonly used Robot Framework capabilities and our current recommendation on what to use for building new automation workflows on Python.

Follow this general practice, and look at the details from the table below:

• Robot Framework libraries are largely obsolete, as their functionality is covered by Python language's basic structures or very commonly used libraries like DateTime and os.
• RPA Framework libraries dealing with Robocorp platform are replaced by equivalent libs in the robocorp namespace.
• RPA Framework libraries that have been thin wrappers for a Python package will be deprecated over time. These deprecations will be notified separately at a later stage. Look for the table, and adopt the equivalent Python package at your convenience.
• For any browser automation, we recommend starting to use robocorp.browser instead of RPA.Browser.Selenium or RPA.Browser.Playwright. We realise the effort required to migrate old Selenium automations to the new way – thus, we will keep supporting the old library in Python for now.
• Windows automation is now best done with the new robocorp.windows. We recommend using it instead of RPA.Windows.
• For all the rest, keep on using RPA Framework in Python.

Library mappings