How do you use tags to mark test cases as critical, non-critical, or optional in Robot Framework?

1 What are tags in Robot Framework?

Tags are labels that you can assign to your test cases, test suites, or individual keywords in Robot Framework. You can use tags to group related test cases, to indicate the priority or status of a test case, to mark test cases that require special setup or teardown, or to exclude test cases from execution. Tags are case-insensitive and can contain any characters except spaces.

3 How to mark test cases as critical or non-critical?

One common use of tags is to mark test cases as critical or non-critical. Critical test cases are those that must pass for the test suite to be considered successful, while non-critical test cases are those that can fail without affecting the overall result. By default, all test cases are critical, unless they have the tag non-critical. You can change this behavior by using the Criticality setting in the setting table, which allows you to define which tags make a test case critical or non-critical.

5 How to filter test cases by tags?

You can filter test cases by tags using the --include, --exclude, or --select options when running the test suite. The --include option runs only the test cases that have the specified tags, while the --exclude option runs only the test cases that do not have the specified tags. The --select option allows you to use more complex expressions to filter test cases by tags, such as AND, OR, and NOT operators. For example, --select critical AND optional runs only the test cases that have both the critical and optional tags.

6 How to report test results by tags?

You can report test results by tags using the --report, --log, or --xunit options when running the test suite. The --report option generates a high-level summary of the test results, which shows the number and percentage of passed and failed test cases, as well as the number and percentage of critical and non-critical test cases. The --log option generates a detailed log of the test execution, which shows the status, message, and tags of each test case and keyword. The --xunit option generates an XML file that conforms to the xUnit format, which can be used by other tools for further analysis or integration.