02-local-development.md

Local development

Using the VSCode extension

If you are developing in VSCode with the Robocorp Code extension, you can utilize the built in local development features described in the Developing with work items locally section of the Using work items development guide.

This allows you to develop and test your work items before deploying to Control Room.

Using a custom editor

It's also possible to develop locally with a custom editor, but it requires some configuration.

To enable the development mode for the library, you should set the environment variable RC_WORKITEM_ADAPTER with the value FileAdapter. This tells the library to use local files for simulating input and output queues for work items, in the form of JSON files.

The environment variables RC_WORKITEM_INPUT_PATH and RC_WORKITEM_OUTPUT_PATH should also be set, and should contain the paths to the input and output JSON files. The output file will be created by the library, but the input file should be created manually.

An example of an input file with one work item:

[
    {
        "payload": {
            "variable1": "a-string-value",
            "variable2": ["a", "list", "value"]
        },
        "files": {
            "file1": "path/to/file.ext"
        }
    }
]

The format of the file is a list of objects, where each item in the list corresponds to one work item. The payload key can contain any arbitrary JSON, and the files key is pairs of names and paths to files.