Use test database with grunt and mocha

Question

I am building a web app in Node.js, Express, and MongoDB using Mongoose. I want to have a dedicated database for when i run my Mocha tests with Grunt so that I do not mess up the database I am using for development. How would I do this?

I currently have my development database configuration information in a file at /config/db.js, which is loaded and connecting to my development database in my app.js file at startup. How would I make my Mocha tests, that are run in a Grunt task, use a test database dynamically when I run Grunt? I have tried to disconnect from development database in my test files in the before() hook in my Mocha test files, and then connect to test database. However, it keeps using development database. An example is the following:

before(function(done) {
    if(mongoose.connection.db) mongoose.connection.close();
    mongoose.connect(<test_db_uri>, done);
}

Answer 1

Your question is near of the following question Test environment in Node.js / Express application.

Basicly what you should do is use an env variable ('NODE_ENV' for exemple) access it with process.env.NODE_ENV and base on its value call the right configuration file. You should take a look to grunt-express-server which helps you a lot with the environement setup.

I hop this will help!