Mocha beforeEach vs before execution

Question

I ran into a problem recently that I can't explain. I have alot of code in these tests so I'm going to do my best to capture the idea here

I have tests that look like:

describe('main page', function() {   beforeEach(function(done){     addUserToMongoDb(done);   // #1   });    afterEach(function(done) {     removeUserFromMongoDb(done);   });    context('login', function() {      it('should log the user in', function() {        logUserIn(user_email);  // #2 - This line requires the user from the beforeEach      });   });    context('preferences', function() {     before(function(done) {    //#3        logUserInBeforeTest(user_email);      });      it('should show the preferences', function() {        doCheckPreferences(); // #4     });   }); }); 

The problem is, the beforeEach by #1 runs fine. I can see it happening on the DB and the tests in #2 pass.

However, the tests in the preferences context at #4 fail because it cant find the user to log them in at #3.

It seems that the context before is executed before the describe beforeEach, which causes them to fail. If I move logUserIn into the it block it works fine.

What could cause this?

Answer 1

While this answer just shows the documentation notes again, and had some comments to try to help show the difference, the answer below by @tomasz-wszelaki should be refered to.

Mocha's test runner explains this functionality the best in the Hooks section of the Mocha Test Runner.

From the Hooks section:

describe('hooks', function() {      before(function() {         // runs before all tests in this file regardless where this line is defined.     });      after(function() {         // runs after all tests in this file     });      beforeEach(function() {         // runs before each test in this block     });      afterEach(function() {         // runs after each test in this block     });      // test cases }); 

You can nest these routines within other describe blocks which can also have before/beforeEach routines.