2022-05-19 –, Main Hall
It's as easy as ever to start a local or cloud Robot Framework environment. But it's yet easier to open a web page. We present to you interactive, in-browser Robot Framework with JupyterLite. We show how you can author and execute tasks and test suites from trivially-scaled static web hosting – without any on-demand infrastructure.
RobotKernel in the browser enables fun, web-scale Robot Framework writing and running. Built on JupyterLite, a composable, interactive computing distribution hosted entirely within the web browser, we present use cases where in-browser Robot Framework excels, despite limitations of the browser execution environment.
Our first, and the most obvious, use case is to use JupyterLite for deploying interactive Robot Framework learning experiences. For example, a free account on ReadTheDocs and GitHub is sufficient to continuously deploy JupyterLite-powered Robot Framework examples and exercises for a classroom of unlimited size, without any GDPR or other compliance concerns. The core user experience of the literate read-evaluate-print-interact loop of the Notebook can be augmented with multi-user voice and video chat powered by Jitsi Meet, and interactive diagrams with Drawio. In the future, we expect JupyterLite to be easy to embed with any documentation.
Our other use case is to use JupyterLite for embedding Robot Framework authoring environments into 3rd party web applications. We present how integrating JupyterLite with the Camunda Platform makes it possible to author acceptance tests for business process management notation (BPMN) models directly from its Camunda Cockpit application. Highly customizable, this experience can be tailored to meet branding needs, and can be configured to only use resources from on-premises servers.
Nick is a long-time contributor to many Jupyter, Python, and JavaScript projects, bringing skills and knowledge to integrate Robot across many parts of the Jupyter ecosystem and beyond. Nick works at the Georgia Tech Research Institute as a Systems Architect, while also providing code, design and architecture contributions as a Jupyter Project core team member.
Asko is a full-time software development professional, who has been using Robot Framework since 2012. Currently, he works as a Software Architect at Digital Services of University of Jyväskylä, where Robot Framework is used for both acceptance testing and process automation.
Asko bootstrapped the work on RobotKernel, Robot Framework support for Jupyter platforms, at the sprints of RoboCon 2018, and continues to bring Robot Framework with him to new adventures.