Status: New
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Medium
New issue 1266 by [email protected]: "Run keyword and continue on
failure" changes the return value of the calling keyword to NULL
http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/detail?id=1266
Example:
*** Test Cases ***
Test case 1
${x}= My keyword
Log ${x} <--------- This is always NULL instead of "Hello there"
*** Keywords ***
My keyword
Run Keyword And Continue On Failure Fail
${output}= Set Variable Hello there
[Return] ${output}
Let me explain how I found this problem and why I think this should not be
the default behaviour.
I have a keyword which does several things. One of them is trying to stop a
remote server which might fail for a number of non critical reasons.
Because of this, I decided to wrap this particular action in a "Run keyword
and continue on failure" keyword. This is because when this happens I want
the test to appear as FAILED but continue execution nevertheless.
However, due to the "problem" being reported here, when the remote server
operation actually fails, the outer keyword returns NULL and the test case
eventually fails when some other keyword tries to access the contents of
the returned value (which is now "NULL") which should contain data objects
needed for other critical operation.
One possible workaround would be to use "Run Keyword And Ignore Error"
instead, keep track of the returned value from this keyword (either "PASS"
or "FAIL") and later make use of it to "manually" mark the current test
case as FAIL... but this solution requires keeping track of that returned
value through the nested functions back to the test case entry level.
On the other hand, if "Run Keyword And Continue On Failure" would not
change the return value of the calling keyword, none of this would be
needed and the resulting test case structure would be much cleaner.
