Robo is an all-in-one Python automation framework
Create, develop, run, and deploy your automation code with Robo - and operate it all with Control Room
Table of Contents
What is Robo?
Robo is both a CLI for managing your Python projects, and a set of libraries for automating your tasks. It handles your entire automation development lifecycle, and has several key features:
- Isolated environments. Get started without installing any other tools, not even Python. Robo automatically creates fully isolated environments for projects, which can be reproduced anywhere else.
- Batteries included. Robo ships with a broad set of libraries for automating common tasks, be it browser automation, document processing, or navigating desktop applications.
- Reduce boilerplate. Turn your Python snippet into a runnable automation with minimal effort. Robo can be used to execute your code in other environments, and deployed in Control Room without any infrastructure work.
- Troubleshoot easily. Robo automatically traces your automation task, and create an easy-to-read report of what happened. You can quickly see if something went wrong - and how to fix it.
Robo is designed to function as a single tool that helps you more easily get things done. It is entirely compatible with the PyPI and Conda ecosystems, but also brings in a set of libraries designed from the ground up to be focused on automation.
Getting started
To install Robo, visit our downloads site to get the latest version.
After downloading, you can create a new project with:
robo newIt will interactively prompt for project name and type, after which it'll create a new environment for the project. This might take a few minutes for the first time, but results are cached and will be quick on later iterations.
Looking at the created tasks.py, the runnable portions of the project are defined with a @task decorator. It tells robo that the function implements one specific automation task, which can then later be scheduled to run in Control Room.
from robocorp.tasks import task
@task
def hello():
print("Hello World!")The above minimum example defines a task, which can then be executed with robo run.
Check out the docs page for more in-depth tutorials, and refer to the API documentation to learn how to use the different libraries. If you have further questions or want to help, join our Forum.
CLI
The robo CLI is used to manage and run your projects during development, and it bundles your project for deployment.
robo new
Create an entirely new Python project, isolated from the rest of your system. No need to install Python separately or manually manage virtual environments.
robo run
Run your defined Python tasks. Robo instruments the running code, and generates a pretty report of what was executed.
robo exec
Easily run an arbitrary command within the isolated environment, such as shell commands or a locally installed application.
robo lock
Generate configuration files compatible with rcc.
robo export
Package your project as a Control Room compatible bundle, ready for deployment.
Libraries
The framework includes Python libraries for configuring project entrypoints and controlling features such as a logging. The project also provides an extensive selection of libraries for the most common automation tasks, and anything else can be easily done through what is already available in the Python ecosystem.
robocorp.tasks
Create entrypoints for your automation project.
robocorp.log
Configure and control the execution log.
robocorp.vault
Store secret values in Control Room and access them during the execution.
robocorp.workitems
Interact with Control Room work items; Read data from previous steps, create output data.
robocorp.browser
Automate actions in a browser, powered by Playwright.
robocorp.excel
Read and write Excel files directly, with support for both .xlsx and .xls.
robocorp.http
Download files easily, or make custom HTTP requests.
Documentation
To find further user guides and read API documentation, see the internal documentation.