RPA Framework

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Introduction

RPA Framework is a collection of open-source libraries and tools for Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and it is designed to be used with both Robot Framework and Python. The goal is to offer well-documented and actively maintained core libraries for Software Robot Developers.

Learn more about RPA at Robocorp Documentation.

The project is:

• 100% Open Source
• Sponsored by Robocorp
• Optimized for Robocorp Control Room and Developer Tools
• Accepting external contributions

Links

• Homepage: https://www.github.com/robocorp/rpaframework/
• Documentation: https://rpaframework.org/
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/rpaframework/
• Release notes: https://rpaframework.org/releasenotes.html
• RSS feed: https://rpaframework.org/releases.xml

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Packages

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From the above packages, rpaframework-core and rpaframework-recognition are support packages, which alone do not contain any libraries.

Libraries

The RPA Framework project currently includes the following libraries:

The x in the PACKAGE column means that library is included in the rpaframework package and for example. x,pdf means that RPA.PDF library is provided in both the rpaframework and rpaframework-pdf packages.

LIBRARY NAME	DESCRIPTION	PACKAGE
Archive	Archiving TAR and ZIP files	x
Assistant	Display information to a user and request input.	assistant
Browser.Selenium	Control browsers and automate the web	x
Browser.Playwright	Newer way to control browsers	special (more below)
Calendar	For date and time manipulations	x
Cloud.AWS	Use Amazon AWS services	x,aws
Cloud.Azure	Use Microsoft Azure services	x
Cloud.Google	Use Google Cloud services	google
Crypto	Common hashing and encryption operations	x
Database	Interact with databases	x
Desktop	Cross-platform desktop automation	x
Desktop.Clipboard	Interact with the system clipboard	x
Desktop.OperatingSystem	Read OS information and manipulate processes	x
DocumentAI	Intelligent Document Processing wrapper	x
DocumentAI.Base64AI	Intelligent Document Processing service	x
DocumentAI.Nanonets	Intelligent Document Processing service	x
Email.Exchange	E-Mail operations (Exchange protocol)	x
Email.ImapSmtp	E-Mail operations (IMAP & SMTP)	x
Excel.Application	Control the Excel desktop application	x
Excel.Files	Manipulate Excel files directly	x
FileSystem	Read and manipulate files and paths	x
FTP	Interact with FTP servers	x
HTTP	Interact directly with web APIs	x
Hubspot	Access HubSpot CRM data objects	hubspot
Images	Manipulate images	x
JavaAccessBridge	Control Java applications	x
JSON	Manipulate JSON objects	x
MFA	Authenticate using one-time passwords (OTP) & OAuth2	x
Notifier	Notify messages using different services	x
OpenAI	Artificial Intelligence service	openai
Outlook.Application	Control the Outlook desktop application	x
PDF	Read and create PDF documents	x,pdf
Robocorp.Process	Use the Robocorp Process API	x
Robocorp.WorkItems	Use the Robocorp Work Items API	x
Robocorp.Vault	Use the Robocorp Secrets API	x
Robocorp.Storage	Use the Robocorp Asset Storage API	x
Salesforce	Salesforce operations	x
SAP	Control SAP GUI desktop client	x
Smartsheet	Access Smartsheet sheets	x
Tables	Manipulate, sort, and filter tabular data	x
Tasks	Control task execution	x
Twitter	Twitter API interface	x
Windows	Alternative library for Windows automation	x,windows
Word.Application	Control the Word desktop application	x

Installation of RPA.Browser.Playwright

The RPA.Browser.Playwright at the moment requires special installation, because of the package size and the post install step it needs to be fully installed.

Minimum required conda.yaml to install Playwright:

channels:
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
  - python=3.9.16
  - nodejs=16.14.2
  - pip=22.1.2
  - pip:
    - robotframework-browser==17.2.0
    - rpaframework==24.1.2
rccPostInstall:
  - rfbrowser init

Installation

Learn about installing Python packages at Installing Python Packages.

Default installation method with Robocorp Developer Tools using conda.yaml:

channels:
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
  - python=3.9.16
  - pip=22.1.2
  - pip:
    - rpaframework==24.1.2

To install all extra packages (including Playwright dependencies), you can use:

channels:
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
  - python=3.9.16
  - tesseract=4.1.1
  - nodejs=16.14.2
  - pip=22.1.2
  - pip:
    - robotframework-browser==17.2.0
    - rpaframework==24.1.2
    - rpaframework-aws==5.2.8
    - rpaframework-google==7.0.3
    - rpaframework-recognition==5.1.2
rccPostInstall:
  - rfbrowser init

Separate installation of AWS, PDF and Windows libraries without the main rpaframework:

channels:
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
  - python=3.9.16
  - pip=22.1.2
  - pip:
    - rpaframework-aws==5.2.8  # included in the rpaframework as an extra
    - rpaframework-pdf==7.1.5  # included in the rpaframework by default
    - rpaframework-windows==7.3.2  # included in the rpaframework by default

Installation method with pip using Python venv:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install rpaframework

Note

Python 3.8 or higher is required

Example

After installation the libraries can be directly imported inside Robot Framework:

*** Settings ***
Library    RPA.Browser.Selenium

*** Tasks ***
Login as user
    Open available browser    https://example.com
    Input text    id:user-name    ${USERNAME}
    Input text    id:password     ${PASSWORD}

The libraries are also available inside Python:

from RPA.Browser.Selenium import Selenium

lib = Selenium()

lib.open_available_browser("https://example.com")
lib.input_text("id:user-name", username)
lib.input_text("id:password", password)

Support and contact

• rpaframework.org for library documentation
• Robocorp Documentation for guides and tutorials
• #rpaframework channel in Robot Framework Slack if you have open questions or want to contribute
• Robocorp Forum for discussions about RPA
• Communicate with your fellow Software Robot Developers and Robocorp experts at Robocorp Developers Slack

Contributing

Found a bug? Missing a critical feature? Interested in contributing? Head over to the Contribution guide to see where to get started.

Development

Repository development is Python based and requires at minimum Python version 3.8+ installed on the development machine. The default Python version used in the Robocorp Robot template is 3.9.16 so it is a good choice for the version to install. Not recommended versions are 3.7.6 and 3.8.1, because they have issues with some of the dependencies related to rpaframework. At the time the newer Python versions starting from 3.11 are also not recommended, because some of the dependencies might cause issues.

Repository development tooling is based on poetry and invoke. Poetry is the underlying tool used for compiling, building and running the package. Invoke is used for scripting purposes, for example for linting, testing and publishing tasks.

Before writing any code, please read and acknowledge our extensive Dev Guide.

First steps to start developing:

1. initial poetry configuration

poetry config virtualenvs.path null
poetry config virtualenvs.in-project true
poetry config repositories.devpi "https://devpi.robocorp.cloud/ci/test"

2. git clone the repository

3. create a new Git branch or switch to correct branch or stay in master branch

   • some branch naming conventions feature/name-of-feature, hotfix/name-of-the-issue, release/number-of-release

4. poetry install which install package with its dependencies into the .venv directory of the package, for example packages/main/.venv

5. if testing against Robocorp Robot which is using devdata/env.json

   • set environment variables
   • or poetry build and use resulting .whl file (in the dist/ directory) in the Robot conda.yaml
   • or poetry build and push resulting .whl file (in the dist/ directory) into a repository and use raw url to include it in the Robot conda.yaml
   • another possibility for Robocorp internal development is to use Robocorp devpi instance, by poetry publish --ci and point conda.yaml to use rpaframework version in devpi

6. poetry run python -m robot <ROBOT_ARGS> <TARGET_ROBOT_FILE>

   • common ROBOT_ARGS from Robocorp Robot template: --report NONE --outputdir output --logtitle "Task log"

7. poetry run python <TARGET_PYTHON_FILE>

8. invoke lint to make sure that code formatting is according to rpaframework repository guidelines. It is possible and likely that Github action will fail the if developer has not linted the code changes. Code formatting is based on black and flake8 and those are run with the invoke lint.

9. the library documentation can be created in the repository root (so called "meta" package level). The documentation is built by the docgen tools using the locally installed version of the project, local changes for the main package will be reflected each time you generate the docs, but if you want to see local changes for optional packages, you must utilize invoke install-local --package <package_name> using the appropriate package name (e.g., rpaframework-aws). This will reinstall that package as a local editable version instead of from PyPI. Multiple such packages can be added by repeating the use of the --package option. In order to reset this, use invoke install --reset.

   • poetry update and/or invoke install-local --package <package name>
   • make docs
   • open docs/build/html/index.html with the browser to view the changes or execute make local and navigate to localhost:8000 to view docs as a live local webpage.

   # Before
   [tool.poetry.dependencies]
   python = "^3.8"
   rpaframework = { path = "packages/main", extras = ["cv", "playwright", "aws"] }
   rpaframework-google = "^4.0.0"
   rpaframework-windows = "^4.0.0"
   
   # After
   [tool.poetry.dependencies]
   python = "^3.8"
   rpaframework = { path = "packages/main", extras = ["cv", "playwright"] }
   rpaframework-aws = { path = "packages/aws" }
   rpaframework-google = "^4.0.0"
   rpaframework-windows = "^4.0.0"

10. invoke test (this will run both Python unittests and robotframework tests defined in the packages tests/ directory)

    • to run specific Python test: poetry run pytest path/to/test.py::test_function
    • to run specific Robotframework test: inv testrobot -r <robot_name> -t <task_name>

11. git commit changes

12. git push changes to remote

13. create pull request from the branch describing changes included in the description

14. update docs/source/releasenotes.rst with changes (commit and push)

Packaging and publishing are done after changes have been merged into master branch. All the following steps should be done within master branch.

1. git pull latest changes into master branch
2. in the package directory containing changes execute invoke lint and invoke test
3. update pyproject.toml with new version according to semantic versioning
4. update docs/source/releasenotes.rst with changes
5. in the repository root (so called "meta" package level) run command poetry update
6. git commit changed poetry.lock files (on meta and target package level), releasenotes.rst and pyproject.toml with message "PACKAGE. version x.y.z"
7. git push
8. invoke publish after Github action on master branch is all green

Some recommended tools for development

• Visual Studio Code as a code editor with following extensions:

  • Robocorp Code
  • Robot Framework Language Server
  • GitLens
  • Python extension

• GitHub Desktop will make version management less prone to errors

License

This project is open-source and licensed under the terms of the Apache License 2.0.