Set session cookie across the test suites in Robot framework

Question

My app is a RESTful API which works only if the session cookie exists. Unfortunately, I always need to get authenticated in a web login to get the cookie and pass the session cookie to the API's to establish session.

I am able to figure out solution to authenticate and pass the session cookie to the API's and write test cases using robot framework. Everything until here works fine in a single test suite file.

articles-config.py

ARTICLE_PREPROD = 'http://10.122.123.124:3001'
ARTICLE_CREATION_UI_API = '/api/articles/create'
ARTICLE_UPDATE_UI_API = '/api/articles/update'

session-cookie.robot

*** Settings ***
Documentation    Suite description
Library  Selenium2Library


*** Keywords ***

Get Authn Session
    [Arguments]     ${url}  ${username}    ${password}
    [Documentation]  Login using Authn
    Open browser  ${url}  chrome
    Input Text   id=j_username    ${username}
    Input Password  id=j_password  ${password}
    Click Element  name=submit
    ${cookie_value}     Get Cookie Value    SESSION
    [Teardown]    Close Browser
    ${session_cookie}  Create Dictionary   SESSION=${cookie_value}
    Set Suite Variable  ${SESSION_COOKIE}   ${session_cookie}
    [Return]  ${session_cookie}

article-create.robot

*** Settings ***
Documentation    Suite description
Test Teardown

Library  Collections
Library  RequestsLibrary
Library  json

Resource  ../keywords/session-cookie.robot
Variables  ../variables/articlesCreationData.py
Variables  ../articles-config.py
Suite Setup  Get Authn Session  ${ARTICLE_PREPROD}  username    password


*** Test Cases ***
Article creation API
    [Tags]    ArticleCreation    
    Article creation from UI

Artcile2 creation API
    [Tags]    ArticleCreation
    Article2 creation from UI    

*** Keywords ***
Article creation from UI
    [Documentation]  Creating Article
    Create Session  articleCreate  ${ARTICLE_PREPROD}  cookies=${SESSION_COOKIE}
    ${headers}  Create Dictionary  Content-Type=application/json
    ${response}  Post Request  articleCreate  ${ARTICLE_CREATION_UI_API}  data=${ARTICLE_CREATE}  headers=${headers}
    log  ${response.text}


Article2 creation from UI
    [Arguments]
    [Documentation]  Creating Article
    Create Session  articleCreate  ${ARTICLE_PREPROD}  cookies=${SESSION_COOKIE}
    ${headers}  Create Dictionary  Content-Type=application/json
    ${response}  Post Request  articleCreate  ${ARTICLE_CREATION_UI_API}  data=${ARTICLE_CREATE}  headers=${headers}
    log  ${response.text}

My question is that how do I make sure that SESSION_COOKIE is available to all the test suites across the robot files.

For example, if I have another test suite file called update-article.robot. How do I pass the SESSION_COOKIE to /api/articles/update API. Please let me know the better approach to test the authenticated based API's.

Do I need to store the cookie in a sqlite db or save it in a yml file or any better approach or I am doing everything wrong.

Solution:

__init__.robot

*** Settings ***

Documentation    Suite description

Resource  ../keywords/session-cookie.robot

Variables  ../articles-config.py

Suite Setup  Get Authn Session  ${ARTICLE_PREPROD}  username    password

Answer 1

You could use the Set Global Variable keyword. This will set your variable within the global scope, and make it available in every suite and test cases executed after.