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Smart Wait Strategies

One of the most common causes of "flaky" automation is improper waiting. Scripts often fail because they try to click a button before it has fully loaded.

QWeb solves this with a robust Auto-Retry mechanism.

How it Works

You generally do not need to tell QWeb to "wait" for an element. When you run a keyword like ClickText, QWeb enters a retry loop:

  1. Search: It looks for the text on the screen.
  2. Action: If found, it clicks immediately.
  3. Retry: If not found, it waits a split second and tries again.
  4. Fail: It repeats this until the Timeout is reached (Default: 10 seconds). Only then does it fail.

Configuration

Global Timeout

The default 10-second timeout works for most modern apps. However, if you are testing a slow legacy system or a heavy environment, you can increase this globally at the start of your test.

*** Test Cases ***
Configure Environment
    # Set default wait to 30 seconds for all keywords
    SetConfig      DefaultTimeout    30

    OpenBrowser    https://slow-app.example.com    chrome
    VerifyText     Loaded successfully    # Will now wait up to 30s

Per-Keyword Timeout

Sometimes you expect a specific action to take longer (e.g., generating a report), or you want to fail faster if something isn't there immediately. You can override the timeout for a single line using the timeout argument.

# Wait up to 60 seconds just for this step
VerifyText     Report Generated    timeout=60

# Fail quickly (after 3 seconds) if this is not found
VerifyText     Popup Message       timeout=3

The "Anti-Sleep" Rule

Avoid using Sleep

In traditional automation, you might see code like: 

Sleep          5s
ClickElement   //button
Avoid this in QWeb. Hard-coded sleeps make your test suite slow. If the button loads in 1 second, your test still waits for 5, wasting 4 seconds every time.

Instead, rely on Verify* keywords and adjust the max wait time with timeout argument necessary.

The "Wait Until Keyword Succeeds" Trap

Avoid wrapping QWeb keywords with Wait Until Keyword Succeeds

QWeb keywords (like ClickText, VerifyText, etc.) already have a built-in retry and timeout mechanism. Wrapping them with Robot Framework’s Wait Until Keyword Succeeds is not only redundant, but can cause confusing and unpredictable wait times.

Timeout vs. Delay

QWeb offers two arguments that look similar but behave very differently.

Argument Behavior Recommendation
timeout=10 Waits up to 10s. Proceeds immediately if found. ✅ Preferred
delay=10 Always waits 10s before even looking. ❌ Avoid

When to use delay? Only use delay if you have a UI animation that "bounces" or fades in, and you need to ensure it has settled before interacting.

# Waits 2 seconds for animation to settle, then clicks
ClickText    Submit    delay=2