How can I retrieve the current test's name within a Mocha test?

Question

For additional logging, I need to be able to print the current test's description.

How can I do this (with Mocha BDD)?

Answer 1

If you are directly inside a callback to describe, you can use this.title for the title of the describe or this.fullTitle() to get the hierarchical title of the describe (ancestors' titles + the title of this one). If you are inside a callback to it you can use this.test.title or this.test.fullTitle() respectively. So:

describe("top", function() {     console.log(this.title);     console.log(this.fullTitle());      it("test", function () {         console.log(this.test.title);         console.log(this.test.fullTitle());     }); }); 

The console.log statements above will output:

top top test top test 

Here's a fuller example that shows how the titles change depending on nesting:

function dump () {     console.log("running: (fullTitle)", this.test.fullTitle(), "(title)",                 this.test.title); }  function directDump() {     console.log("running (direct): (fullTitle)", this.fullTitle(), "(title)",                 this.title); }  describe("top", function () {     directDump.call(this);     it("test 1", dump);     it("test 2", dump);     describe("level 1", function () {         directDump.call(this);         it("test 1", dump);         it("test 2", dump);     }); }); 

The console.log statements will output:

running (direct): (fullTitle) top (title) top running (direct): (fullTitle) top level 1 (title) level 1 running: (fullTitle) top test 1 (title) test 1 running: (fullTitle) top test 2 (title) test 2 running: (fullTitle) top level 1 test 1 (title) test 1 running: (fullTitle) top level 1 test 2 (title) test 2 

Answer 2

From within a beforeEach, try this.currentTest.title.

Example:

beforeEach(function(){   console.log(this.currentTest.title);  }) 

Using Mocha 3.4.1.