[Testing] Automation flow by Robot Framework, GitHub Actions and Postman Monitor

   Robot Framework   GitHub Actions   Postman Monitor 

▌Introduction

---

 

Due to COVID-19, many people work from home and need to clock in or out online on working days.

Since I sometimes forget to clock in or out online and I am so lazy to open the HR website and enter user ID/PWD each time on it, I decided to make the automation clock in(out) flow by E2E testing stack.

 

I use the stack as following:

ü  Robot Framework

ü  Azure Container Registry

ü  GitHub Actions

ü  Postman Monitor

 

 

   

 

 

 

▌Steps

---

 

▋Record and prepare the E2E automation test

 

I use Katalon Recorder and Robot Framework to have both automation test as clock_in.robot and clock_out.robot.

 

I would like to run the tests in Docker environment, so I made a dockefile and could be built and published the Docker Image to a private Docker registry (e.q. Azure Container Registry).

 

See my previous article, [Robot Framework] Run E2E test by Chrome and SeleniumLibrary in Docker, for the implementation details.

 

Now, I have to find a way to pull the Docker Image and then run the tests automatically.

 

 

▋GitHub Actions

 

GitHub Actions supports amazing and easy way to automate the workflow.

This article, [GitHub] Github Actions - Workflow dependencies, shows how to pull and run a Docker Image by GitHub Actions workflow.

 

Here is the YAML file of workflow that has workflow dispatch event. I will talk about why using workflow dispatch instead of schedule event later.

 

 

▋docker_clock_in.yml

---

name: Docker Clock In

on:

  # schedule:

  #   - cron: '10 0 * * 1-5'

  workflow_dispatch:

    inputs:

      trigger:

        description: "The trigger"

        required: false

        default: "Postman Monitor"

      trigger_datetime:

        description: "The datetime for triggering the workflow"

        required: true  

jobs:

  clock_out:

    name: Clock In

    runs-on: ubuntu-18.04

    steps:

      - name: Print Environment Variables

        shell: bash

        run: |

          echo "Arguments are ${{ github.event.inputs.trigger }}, ${{ github.event.inputs.trigger_datetime }}"

      - name: Docker Run

        uses: addnab/docker-run-action@v3

        with:

          username: ${{ secrets.ACR_USERNAME }}

          password: ${{ secrets.ACR_PASSWORD }}

          registry: ${{ secrets.ACR_REGISTRY }}

          image: ${{ secrets.ACR_REGISTRY }}/robot-bank:latest

          options: --rm --shm-size=2gb

          run: |

            robot /usr/src/rf/tests/ClockInOut/clock_in.robot

 

And my GitHub Actions secrets:

 

 

After pushing the workflow YAML file to main/master branch, I can trigger the workflow (open the headless Chrome, go to HR website and then clock in) in three ways.
(Reference: Manually running a workflow)

1. GitHub CLI: gh workflow run <workflow>

2. Run the workflow in GitHub Actions UI

 

3. Run the workflow by sending the HttpPost request to

https://api.github.com/repos/<user_id>/<reponsitory_name>/actions/workflows/<workflow>.yml/dispatches

Notice that we have to set a Personal access token for Authorization header. 

(See GitHub Docs: Create a workflow dispatch event)

 

 

 

▋Why not use schedule event but workflow_dispatch?

 

I commented out the schedule event in docker_clock_in.yml, and use workflow_dispatch event instead. The reason is that schedule event has a uncertain delay time and won’t be trigger on the schedule time precisely. If your job can tolerates a delay time, schedule event might be a good way to trigger it. However, since I need to clock in before my office hours so I use Postman Monitor to automatically send the request for running the workflow.

 

 

 

▋Postman Monitor

 

Postman Monitor is the collection-based monitor that we can execute a collection of requests and collect the response time and result by scheduled time. Furthermore, it runs on Postman's cloud infrastructure, which is hosted by AWS. In other words, we do not need a live machine to execute the target request(s) by Monitor.

 

The following is my monitoring setup for requesting the clock-in workflow_dispatch API.

After dispatched the workflow, the workflow will pull and run the Docker Image that has automation tests for my clock-in or clock-out.

 

 

▌Summarize

---

 

There are many ways to accomplish this automation job.

I chose the stack/tools is because I don’t want to have extra cost for this routine job and I do want to save my time from it.

 

 

 

▌Reference

---

 ▋GitHub Docs: Events that trigger workflows

▋GitHub Docs: Create a workflow dispatch event

▋GitHub Docs: Manually running a workflow

▋Postman: Monitoring your APIs