Robotic Process Automation with JupyterLab
Introducing a new Jupyter kernel for Robot Framework
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) differs from classical automation tools in that the actions to automate can be developed by observing a user perform a task in a graphical user interface, across multiple applications.
It is a means to lower the entry barrier of process automation and enable the use of tools that don’t provide a programmatic interface.
Most typically, RPA developers will use a mixed approach between textual programming and performing actions manually. The resulting programs are typically called software robots. Therefore, interactive computing tools like Jupyter are a natural environment for RPA, as the interactive nature of Jupyter allows for quick iterations and trial-and-errors when developing such robots.
While many RPA tools are commercial software, Robot Framework and the tooling developed by Robocorp provide an open-source RPA programming language, with a high-level syntax, extensible with Python plugins. It has a rich ecosystem of libraries and tools that are developed as separate projects.
Robot Framework and Project Jupyter
Today, we are happy to announce the first release of xeus-robot, a Jupyter kernel for Robot Framework based on xeus, supporting the new JupyterLab 3.0 visual debugger, auto-completion, and much more!
But before we dive into xeus-robot, we should recognize the earlier work by Nick Bollweg and Asko Soukka, who developed two Jupyter kernels for Robot Framework, irobotframework, and robotkernel, and gave an amazing talk together at RoboCon in 2019!
The motivation for us to reboot this effort with a kernel based on xeus was to enable the JupyterLab Visual Debugger for this kernel. This requires a different concurrency model than that of ipykernel, which underlies both irobotframework and robotkernel. In the end, we were able to provide the same features and more, including e.g. code completion in Python cells, debugging etc.
Diving into Xeus-robot
xeus-robot is a reboot of the already existing robotkernel, based on xeus.
Like most language kernels, xeus-robot supports code completion, inspection, error handling, etc. It also allows using Python cells to define custom robot keywords in Python, those Python cells support code completion as well.
By using the libraries robotframework-seleniumlibrary and robotframework-seleniumscreenshots, you can even complete the selection of elements on the page you are currently testing!
The %%python cell magic makes it possible to extend Robotframework with Python modules in the notebook.
Widget-based UIs are provided to test Robotframework "keywords".
Last but not least, xeus-robot comes with full support for the JupyterLab Visual Debugger! After the xeus-python kernel, it is the second Jupyter kernel to support the Jupyter Debugger Protocol! We hope that many more will come.
You can set breakpoints, step in defined keywords (the equivalent of functions), inspect variables, and see the callstack, as shown below.
Installing xeus-robot
Xeus-robot is available for all platforms on conda-forge, and can be installed with conda or mamba.
mamba install xeus-robot -c conda-forgeThe jupyterlab-robotmode package, which provides JupyterLab syntax highlighting for Robot Framework will also be installed as a dependency.
For your conda installation, we recommend starting from mambaforge or miniforge which are available for download here, and default to the conda-forge channel (making the -c conda-forge argument unnecessary).
Try it online
Thanks to MyBinder, you can try it out without the need of installing anything on your computer. Just follow this link:
Acknowledgments
The work on xeus-robot by QuantStack was funded by Robocorp, and is part of their initiative to create an open-source RPA ecosystem. Beyond the xeus-robot kernel, Robocorp also funds the integration of Robot Framework with Visual Studio Code, RPA Framework, and other development to push the Robot Framework project forward.
The implementation of the debugger in xeus-robot relies on robotframework-lsp by Fabio Zadrozny and we want to thank him for his help in integrating it in xeus-robot.
About the authors
Martin Renou is a scientific software developer at QuantStack. He is the creator of the xeus-python and xeus-robot kernels.
Johan Mabille is a scientific software developer at QuantStack. He is a co-author of the xeus project, and developed the debugger extensions to xeus-python and xeus-robot. He also co-authored the front-end for the JupyterLab visual debugger.
