How to run a single test with Mocha?

Question

I use Mocha to test my JavaScript stuff. My test file contains 5 tests. Is that possible to run a specific test (or set of tests) rather than all the tests in the file?

Answer 1

npm test <filepath>

eg :

npm test test/api/controllers/test.js

here 'test/api/controllers/test.js' is filepath.

Answer 2

If you are using npm test (using package.json scripts) use an extra -- to pass the param through to mocha

e.g. npm test -- --grep "my second test"

EDIT: Looks like --grep can be a little fussy (probably depending on the other arguments). You can:

Modify the package.json:

"test:mocha": "mocha --grep \"<DealsList />\" .",

Or alternatively use --bail which seems to be less fussy

npm test -- --bail

Answer 3

Looking into https://mochajs.org/#usage we see that simply use

mocha test/myfile

will work. You can omit the '.js' at the end.

Answer 4

For those who are looking to run a single file but they cannot make it work, what worked for me was that I needed to wrap my test cases in a describe suite as below and then use the describe title e.g. 'My Test Description' as pattern.

describe('My Test Description', () => {
  it('test case 1', () => {
    // My test code
  })
  it('test case 2', () => {
  // My test code
  })
})

then run

yarn test -g "My Test Description"

or

npm run test -g "My Test Description"

Answer 5

Try using mocha's --grep option:

    -g, --grep <pattern>            only run tests matching <pattern>

You can use any valid JavaScript regex as <pattern>. For instance, if we have test/mytest.js:

it('logs a', function(done) {
  console.log('a');
  done();
});

it('logs b', function(done) {
  console.log('b');
  done();
});

Then:

$ mocha -g 'logs a'

To run a single test. Note that this greps across the names of all describe(name, fn) and it(name, fn) invocations.

Consider using nested describe() calls for namespacing in order to make it easy to locate and select particular sets.

Answer 6

run single test –by filename–

Actually, one can also run a single mocha test by filename (not just by „it()-string-grepping“) if you remove the glob pattern (e.g. ./test/**/*.spec.js) from your mocha.opts, respectively create a copy, without:

node_modules/.bin/mocha --opts test/mocha.single.opts test/self-test.spec.js

Here's my mocha.single.opts (it's only different in missing the aforementioned glob line)

--require ./test/common.js
--compilers js:babel-core/register
--reporter list
--recursive

Background: While you can override the various switches from the opts-File (starting with --) you can't override the glob. That link also has some explanations.

Hint: if node_modules/.bin/mocha confuses you, to use the local package mocha. You can also write just mocha, if you have it installed globally.

---

And if you want the comforts of package.json: Still: remove the **/*-ish glob from your mocha.opts, insert them here, for the all-testing, leave them away for the single testing:

"test": "mocha ./test/**/*.spec.js",
"test-watch": "mocha -R list -w ./test/**/*.spec.js",
"test-single": "mocha $1",
"test-single-watch": "mocha -R list -w $1",

usage:

> npm run test

respectively

> npm run test-single -- test/ES6.self-test.spec.js 

(mind the --!)