Best Python Modules for Automation

Automation is an addition of technology that performs tasks with reduced human assistance to processes that facilitate feedback loops between operations and development teams so that iterative updates can be deployed faster to applications in production.

There are different types of automation library in Python:

• GUI Automation
• Full Stack Automation
• Test Automation

GUI Automation Python library

1) PyAutoGUI

• It lets your Python scripts control the mouse and keyboard to automate interactions with other applications.
• PyAutoGUI works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and runs on Python 2 &  3.

Features:

• Moving the mouse and clicking or typing within the windows of other applications.
• Sending keystrokes to applications.
• Take screenshots, and give a picture, find it on the screen.

2) Pywinauto

• Pywinauto is a module to automate the Windows GUI.
• At its simplest it allows you to send mouse and keyboard actions to window dialogs and controls.

Full Stack Automation

1) Selenium

• One of the foremost popular modules used in Python to perform testing and connect to different browsers.
• This package is used to automate web browser interaction from Python.

Features :

• Control the speed of test cases
• Execute the entire Test Suite
• Runs the currently selected test
• Allows the user to pause and resume a test case

2) Requests

• This module allows(permits) you to send HTTP requests.
• Using this module, we can post or retrieve the information from a Rest API. There are many methods like:
  • GET
  • POST
  • PUT
  • DELETE

3) BeautifulSoup

• Beautiful Soup is the best library for pulling data out of HTML and XML files.
• It works together with your favorite parser to provide idiomatic ways of navigating, searching, and modifying the parse tree.
• It normally saves programmers hours of labor.It's also great for web scraping.
• If you have a simple static webpage where you need to find some small bit of information buried somewhere in the HTML.

4) PyBuilder

• PyBuilder is an automation tool written in pure Python mainly targeting Python ecosystem.
• It supports the concept of dependency-based programming but also comes along with a strong plugin mechanism that allows the construction of build life-cycles similar to those known from other famous build tools like Apache Maven and Gradle.

Test Automation

1) Robot Framework

• This is a generic open-source automation framework.
• It is used for test automation and robotic process automation (RPA).
• It also includes a bunch of test libraries and other tools.
• The Robot Framework is Python-based, but you can also use Jython (Java) or IronPython (.NET).
• Robot can also test other things like:
  • FTP
  • MongoDB
  • Android
  • Appium
  • APIs
  • Mainframes

2) Pytest

• Pytest is a  framework that allows us to write test codes using python.
• You can write code to test anything like database, API, even UI if you want. But pytest is mainly being used in the industry to write tests for APIs.

3) Lettuce

• Lettuce is another simple and easy to use behavior driven automation tool based on Cucumber and Python.
• The main objective of Lettuce is to focus on the common tasks of behavior driven development, making the work simpler and entertaining.

4) Pandas

• Python Pandas is an open-source library that gives a good range of tools for data manipulation & analysis.
• With this library, you can read data from a broad range of sources like CSV, SQL databases, JSON files, and Excel.
• It enables you to manage complex data operation with just one or two commands.
• Python Pandas comes with several inbuilt methods for combining data, and grouping & filtering time-series functionality.
• Overall, Pandas is not just limited to handle data-related tasks; it serves as the best starting point to create more focused and powerful data tools.