How to set timeout on before hook in mocha

mocha.js

I want to set timeout value on before hook in mocha test cases. I know I can do that by adding -t 10000 on the command line of mocha but this will change every test cases timeout value. I want to find a way to change the timeout programmatically below is my code:

describe('test  ', () => {

  before((done) => {
        this.timeout(10000);
         ...

it will complain about the line this.timeout(1000) that timeout is not defined. How to set the timeout on before hook.

Best Answer

You need to set a timeout in your describe block rather than in the hook if you want it to affect all the tests in the describe. However, you need to use a "regular" function as the callback to describe rather than an arrow function:

describe('test', function () {
  this.timeout(10000);

  before(...);

  it(...);
});

In all places where you want to use this in a callback you pass to Mocha you cannot use an arrow function. You must use a "regular" function which has its own this value that can be set by Mocha. If you use an arrow function, the value of this won't be what Mocha wants it to be and your code will fail.

You could set a different timeout for your before hook but there are two things to consider:

Here too you'd need to use a "regular" function rather than an arrow function so:

before(function (done) { 
  this.timeout(10000);

This would set a timeout only for the before hook and would not affect your tests.

Related Solutions

How to increase timeout for a single test case in mocha

Here you go: http://mochajs.org/#test-level

it('accesses the network', function(done){
  this.timeout(500);
  [Put network code here, with done() in the callback]
})

For arrow function use as follows:

it('accesses the network', (done) => {
  [Put network code here, with done() in the callback]
}).timeout(500);

Javascript – Change default timeout for mocha

By default Mocha will read a file named test/mocha.opts that can contain command line arguments. So you could create such a file that contains:

--timeout 5000

Whenever you run Mocha at the command line, it will read this file and set a timeout of 5 seconds by default.

Another way which may be better depending on your situation is to set it like this in a top level describe call in your test file:

describe("something", function () {
    this.timeout(5000); 

    // tests...
});

This would allow you to set a timeout only on a per-file basis.

You could use both methods if you want a global default of 5000 but set something different for some files.

Note that you cannot generally use an arrow function if you are going to call this.timeout (or access any other member of this that Mocha sets for you). For instance, this will usually not work:

describe("something", () => {
    this.timeout(5000); //will not work

    // tests...
});

This is because an arrow function takes this from the scope the function appears in. Mocha will call the function with a good value for this but that value is not passed inside the arrow function. The documentation for Mocha says on this topic:

Passing arrow functions (“lambdas”) to Mocha is discouraged. Due to the lexical binding of this, such functions are unable to access the Mocha context.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to increase timeout for a single test case in mocha

Javascript – Change default timeout for mocha

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