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Tags, Setup and Teardown

Tags and setup/teardown mechanisms help control execution flow, test selection, and lifecycle management in Robot Framework.

They are essential for CI/CD execution and large test suites.

Tags in Robot Framework​

Tags are labels attached to test cases.

Used for:

  • Selective execution
  • Grouping tests
  • CI/CD pipelines

Defining Tags​

*** Test Cases ***
Valid Login
    [Tags]    smoke    regression

Force Tags​

Applied to all tests in a suite.

*** Settings ***
Force Tags    ui

Default Tags​

Applied only if no tags are defined at test level.

*** Settings ***
Default Tags    sanity

Executing Tests Using Tags​

robot --include smoke tests/
robot --exclude regression tests/

Very common in CI pipelines.

Setup and Teardown Concepts​

Setup and teardown manage test lifecycle actions.

Suite Setup / Teardown​

  • Runs once per suite
  • Used for initialization and cleanup
Suite Setup       Initialize Suite
Suite Teardown    Cleanup Suite

Test Setup / Teardown​

  • Runs before and after each test case
Test Setup       Open Application
Test Teardown    Close Application

Execution Order (Important)​

Suite Setup
  ↓
Test Setup
  ↓
Test Case
  ↓
Test Teardown
  ↓
Suite Teardown

Best Practices ✅​

  • Use tags consistently
  • Keep setup lightweight
  • Always clean up in teardown
  • Use tags to control CI execution

Common Mistakes ❌​

  • Overloading setup with logic
  • Forgetting cleanup
  • Inconsistent tagging
  • Hardcoding execution logic

Key Takeaways​

  • Tags control execution scope
  • Setup/teardown manage lifecycle
  • Essential for scalable frameworks
  • Critical for CI/CD pipelines