Get started with SAPFX

1. Install

pip install robotframework-sapfx

Robot Framework comes along as a dependency. If you would rather install nothing by hand, a standalone Windows pack ships with every release: one command, no repository to clone.

SAPFX brings three libraries, one per channel:

• SapEccLibrary: the SAP GUI desktop client (ECC and S/4HANA), through SAP GUI Scripting. It is a compatible superset of SapGuiLibrary.
• SapFioriLibrary: Fiori and SAPUI5 web, on top of the Browser library (Playwright).
• SapApiLibrary: OData v2 and v4 APIs, with optional RFC.

2. Enable SAP GUI Scripting

This step concerns the SAP GUI channel only. The Fiori and API channels do not need it, and they are in fact the easiest place to start if you do not yet have a say over the server.

• Server side: the sapgui/user_scripting parameter must be TRUE. It is set in transaction RZ11, and that usually belongs to your Basis team.
• Client side: the option lives in SAP GUI Options, under Accessibility & Scripting.

From there, two ways to reach a session: start the Logon Pad yourself and call Connect To Session, or let the library start it for you with Open Sap Logon.

3. A first SAP GUI test

*** Settings ***
Library    SapEccLibrary    default_timeout=30s

*** Test Cases ***
Create a sales order
    Open Connection      My SAP System [PRD]
    Connect To Session
    Run Transaction      VA01
    Fill Field By Label  Order Type    OR
    Send Vkey            0             # Enter
    Status Message Should Be Success
    [Teardown]    Close Sap Session

Two things are worth noticing. First Fill Field By Label: the test addresses the field by its visible label, not by a technical identifier. That is what lets a functional tester read the test, and what saves you from rewriting everything when SAP renumbers its screens.

Then Status Message Should Be Success: the assertion targets SAP's status bar independently of the interface language. A test written this way does not break because it was replayed on a German system.

Technical identifiers remain available when you need them (Input Text takes an id shaped like wnd[0]/usr/txtRSYST-BNAME). To capture them, the repository ships an inspection tool under tools/recorder, and SAP GUI's built-in recorder works too.

4. A first Fiori test

SapFioriLibrary builds on the Browser library and reuses its active page, so both must be imported in the same suite.

*** Settings ***
Library    Browser
Library    SapFioriLibrary    ui5_timeout=15s

*** Test Cases ***
Search for an order in Fiori
    Open Fiori App       SalesOrder-manage
    Wait For Ui5 Idle
    Fill Ui5 Input       4711              controlType=SearchField
    Click Ui5 Control    controlType=Button    properties=Go
    Ui5 Text Should Be   Sales Order 4711      controlType=Title

Open Fiori App takes a semantic intent shaped as SemanticObject-action, the very one the launchpad uses, rather than a URL that would differ between environments.

Wait For Ui5 Idle waits for the page to be genuinely at rest: no network request in flight, no animation running. That is the answer to the classic fragility of UI5 tests, where people end up sprinkling fixed sleeps that slow the suite down without making it reliable.

Controls are addressed by type and properties (controlType, properties, id, bindingPath, viewId, idSuffix), never by the identifiers UI5 generates, which change from one run to the next. When several controls match, the match count is logged: an ambiguous selector stays visible instead of being silently truncated.

5. A first OData call

*** Settings ***
Library    SapApiLibrary
Suite Setup    Gateway Should Be Active

*** Test Cases ***
Read the first five sales orders
    Open Api Session    https://my-sap.example/sap/opu/odata/sap/API_SALES_ORDER_SRV
    ...                 user=RFCUSER    sap_client=100
    ${orders}=          Get Odata    A_SalesOrder    top=5
    Log                 ${orders}

Gateway Should Be Active in a Suite Setup is the kind of detail that saves hours: if the OData Gateway is not operational, the suite fails immediately with a message naming the remediation, instead of letting twenty tests fall one by one on incomprehensible errors.

Named arguments become query parameters: top=5 is sent as $top=5, the $ prefix of OData system options being added automatically to known names.

6. Wire it into continuous integration

One nuance per channel, and it matters when sizing your agents:

• Fiori and API: they run anywhere, including on a headless Linux agent.
• SAP GUI: you need a Windows agent with SAP GUI installed. That is a constraint of SAP GUI Scripting, not of SAPFX, and no tool works around it.

In practice teams run both families on two different agents within the same pipeline. The Robot Framework report stays single, whichever channel was exercised.

Where to go next

The complete keyword reference documents all three libraries, generated with Libdoc from the released code: SapEccLibrary, SapFioriLibrary and SapApiLibrary.

Those pages document the low-level keywords. The repository also ships a layer of ready-to-use business keywords (the resources/ directory): that is the layer test suites call in practice, so no raw locator ever ends up inside a test.

To try without a system at hand: the Fiori part can be tested with no SAP at all, and the SAP GUI part validates against the free ABAP Platform Trial in Docker.

Source code (GitHub) PyPI package Frequently asked questions