Mocha before hook not being run before suite

Question

I'm new to Node and Mocha and am having difficulty in understanding why Mocha is skipping over my 'before' hook code to create a Json Web Token in the following example:

//index.js
const createJWT = require('./lib/config/createJWT');
const expect = require('chai').expect;

before(async() => {

  const jwt = await createJWT() {
    return new Promise(
      function(resolve, reject) {
        resolve(jwt);
      }
    )
  }
  const person = createPerson(jwt);

}); //this is where the jwt is created, making it useless for createPerson

describe('My other tests', () => {
it('Customer sign up', async() => {
  const signUpText = await customerSignUp(page, frame);

  expect(signUpText).to.equal("You have signed up")

  });
 });
});

The createJWT() method is as follows:

 //createJWT.js
module.exports = async() => {

  const options = {
    method: 'POST',
    url: 'https://my-website.auth.io/oauth/token',
    headers: {
      'content-type': 'application/json'
    },
    body: '{"client_id":"dew76dw7e65d7w65d7wde"}'
  };

    request(options, function (error, response, body) {
    try {
        console.log(body);
        jwt = body;
        return jwt = body;
    } catch
        (error) {
    }
  });
};

When I debug, the setup code is skipped over. Is there something obvious I'm missing?

Answer 1

I am pretty sure you need to put the before hook in the same test block for it to be ran before it is processed. Ex :

before(async() => {

  const jwt = await createJWT();

});

describe('My other tests', () => {
  it('Customer sign up', async() => {
    const signUpText = await customerSignUp(page, frame);

    expect(signUpText).to.equal("You have signed up")
  });
});

Or :

describe('My other tests', () => {
  before(async() => {

    const jwt = await createJWT();

  });
  it('Customer sign up', async() => {
    const signUpText = await customerSignUp(page, frame);

    expect(signUpText).to.equal("You have signed up")
  });
});

Furthermore, your createJwt method does not return a Promise, which prevents the await from working. You need to do something like this :

module.exports = async() => {

  const options = {
    method: 'POST',
    url: 'https://my-website.auth.io/oauth/token',
    headers: {
      'content-type': 'application/json'
    },
    body: '{"client_id":"dew76dw7e65d7w65d7wde"}'
  };

  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => request(options, function (error, response, body) {
    if(error) {
      reject(error);
    }
    resolve(body);
  }));
};