Undefined error when using mocha's before

[SaladFork]

beforeEach(function() {
  MyPageObject.visit(); // works fine
});

before(function() {
  MyPageObject.visit(); // visit is not defined
});

Error is thrown at visitable.js:95.

Using:

• ember-cli-page-object@1.4.2
• ember-cli-mocha@0.10.4
• ember-mocha-adapter#0.3.1
• mocha#2.5.3
• chai#3.5.0

[san650]

Thanks for reporting the error, I'll take a look at it.

I don't use mocha with ember a lot, so I'm not too familiar with what changes when calling before. What happens if you call visit('/foo') from the before hook? Does the ember test helper exists?

[SaladFork]

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm embarrassed I didn't try the global helper myself, seems an obvious test now.

I'm seeing the same issue with trying to use the global visit helper. I suspect now this is not an issue with ember-cli-page-object.

Any recommendations as to the right project to report this issue?

[san650]

@SaladFork I would say that you should open an issue in ember-mocha rather than opening it in ember-cli-mocha to ask if this is an expected behavior or not.

Reading about Mocha's hooks it kind of make sense that these helpers don't exist on the before hook. This is because you don't have an application instance yet when this hook is executed but you do have one when beforeEach runs.

Remember that when an application is instantiated, it registers all the test helpers in the global context (in the window object).

[SaladFork]

Thanks @san650! Unless I'm misunderstanding, a common pattern in Mocha is to nest describe/context blocks and use before/beforeEach in nested ones in which case the application would be initialized. For example:

describe('Some acceptance test', function() {
  let application;

  beforeEach(function() {
    application = startApp();
  });

  afterEach(function() {
    destroyApp(application);
  });

  context('The main page', function() {
    // No need for `beforeEach` here as we're not changing the page between the below tests,
    // but do want to have each `it` block test only a single thing.
    before(function() {
      MainPageObject.visit();
    });

    it('should have some value on the page', function() {
      // ...
    });

    it('should have another value on the page', function() {
      // ...
    });
  });
});

Thanks again!

[Turbo87]

@SaladFork Indeed I think you're misunderstanding. The beforeEach() block in your example will still be executed twice, once for each test. In fact the nested before() block will be executed before the outer beforeEach() block.

I've taken your example and put some console.log() calls inside those blocks and this is the output:

  Some acceptance test
    The main page
before
beforeEach
      ✓ should have some value on the page
beforeEach
      ✓ should have another value on the page