BrowserStack Integration with Robot Framework Selenium (Python) and Percy on Automate

A minimal example repo showing how to run Robot Framework Selenium tests on BrowserStack Automate, with optional visual testing using Percy (Percy on Automate).

It includes sample Robot tests, a BrowserStack config file (browserstack.yml), and the commands needed to run tests via browserstack-sdk and percy exec.

Prerequisite

python3 should be installed

Setup

• Clone the repo

  git clone -b sdk https://github.com/browserstack/robot-browserstack.git
  

• It is recommended to use a virtual environment to install dependencies. To create a virtual environment:

  python3 -m venv env
  source env/bin/activate # on Mac
  env\Scripts\activate # on Windows
  

• Install dependencies

  pip install -r requirements.txt
  

Set BrowserStack Credentials

• Add your BrowserStack username and access key in the browserstack.yml config fle.

• You can also export them as environment variables, BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME and BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY:

  For Linux/MacOS

  export BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME=<browserstack-username>
  export BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY=<browserstack-access-key>
  

  For Windows

  set BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME=<browserstack-username>
  set BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY=<browserstack-access-key>
  
  setx BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME=<browserstack-username>
  setx BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY=<browserstack-access-key>
  

Running tests

• To run sample tests:
  • To run the sample tests in parallel across the platforms defined in the browserstack.yml file, run:

    browserstack-sdk robot ./tests/test-1.robot
    

Percy visual testing (BrowserStack + Percy on Automate)

The repository can be run through Percy to capture visual snapshots in your BrowserStack Automate runs.

1. Install Percy CLI (recommended global install):

   npm install -g @percy/cli
   

2. Install Percy SDK for Selenium (required for Percy snapshots):

   pip install percy-selenium
   

3. Export your Percy token (from your Percy project settings):

   export PERCY_TOKEN="<your token here>"
   

4. Run your Robot Framework tests through Percy:

   npx percy exec --verbose -- browserstack-sdk robot ./tests/test-1.robot
   

Note: Percy snapshots are captured using percy_screenshot from percy_selenium. For Python-based Selenium tests, you can add from percy import percy_screenshot and call percy_screenshot(driver, name="...") in your test script. For Robot Framework tests, add a corresponding keyword in your test library that calls into the Percy SDK.

Understand how many parallel sessions you need by using our Parallel Test Calculator

Additional Resources

• Documentation for writing Automate test scripts in Python
• Customizing your tests on BrowserStack
• Browsers & mobile devices for selenium testing on BrowserStack
• Using REST API to access information about your tests via the command-line interface
• Percy + BrowserStack Automate guide