MechanicalSoup VS Robot Framework

MechanicalSoup is a Python library for web scraping that combines the simplicity of Requests with the convenience of BeautifulSoup. It's particularly useful for interacting with web forms, like login pages. Here's a basic example to illustrate how you can use MechanicalSoup for web scraping:

Try with Mechanicalsoup https://mechanicalsoup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

You should try MechanicalSoup it uses Beautifulsoup but provides a simpler API using its StatefulBrowser filling forms and doing some other stuff is easier than just directly using requests and Beautifulsoup.

MechanicalSoup

Well, I work with software quality and despite not having a strong foundation in automation, one fine day I decided to make a change. I have been working with Robot Framework for a few months - and that's when I got a taste of the power of python. Some time later, I dabbled a little with Cypress and Playwright, always using javascript.

Robot Framework

I've used Lua/Busted in a data-heavy environment (telemetry from hospital ventilators). I've also used robot: https://robotframework.org/

I can't say whether any of these will work, but maybe one of: PyAutoGui pytest-qt Robot Framework + plugins

I'm looking for tools, strategies, libraries, etc. that would be useful for automating arbitrary desktop applications. Ideally something free and open source. Robot Framework (https://robotframework.org/) looks promising, although the docs seem deliberately unclear about how useable the open source libraries are without the cloud SaaS being sold on top.

Does anyone have experience in this area? What's your secret sauce for robust desktop automations?

In the industry I've seen the framework "Robot framework" https://robotframework.org/ used a lot for test automation.

Check out Robot Framework @ https://robotframework.org/

Greetings! They say all good things must come to an end, and with this post, so it is with my series of posts covering Robot Framework.