I'm trying to get the current describe name inside the before hook, like so:

describe('increasing 3 times', function() {

  before(function() {
    console.log('test name');
  });

  ...

});

I basically want to retrieve the 'increasing 3 times' string in the before hook.

How can this be acplished?

Thanks!

I'm trying to get the current describe name inside the before hook, like so:

describe('increasing 3 times', function() {

  before(function() {
    console.log('test name');
  });

  ...

});

I basically want to retrieve the 'increasing 3 times' string in the before hook.

How can this be acplished?

Thanks!

• javascript
• unit-testing
• mocha.js

• In case mocha doesn't provide an API for that, you could store the name in a variable. It won't read as nicely though. – Felix Kling Commented Dec 18, 2014 at 18:55
• True.. I'm trying to avoid that. – Edy Bourne Commented Dec 18, 2014 at 20:35

1 Answer 1

Here's code that illustrates how you can do it:

describe("top", function () {
    before(function () {
        console.log("full title:", this.test.fullTitle());
        console.log("parent title:", this.test.parent.title);
    });

    it("test 1", function () {});
});

Run with the spec reporter, this will output:

full title: top "before all" hook
parent title: top
    ✓ test 1 


  1 passing (4ms)

When Mocha calls the functions you pass to its various functions (describe, before, it, etc.) the value of this is a Context object. One of the fields of this object is named test. It is a bit of a misnomer because it can point to something else than an actual test. In the case of a hook like before it points to the current Hook object created for the before call. Calling fullTitle() on this object will get you the hierarchical name of the object: the object's own name preceded by the name of the test suites (describe) that enclose it. A Hook object also has a parent field that points to the suite that contains the hook. And the suite has a title field which is the first argument that was passed to describe.