Mocha Testing Skill

Core Patterns

Basic Test with Chai

const { expect } = require('chai');

describe('Calculator', () => {
  let calc;
  beforeEach(() => { calc = new Calculator(); });

  it('should add two numbers', () => {
    expect(calc.add(2, 3)).to.equal(5);
  });

  it('should throw on divide by zero', () => {
    expect(() => calc.divide(10, 0)).to.throw('Division by zero');
  });
});

Chai Assertions

expect(value).to.equal(5);
expect(arr).to.have.lengthOf(3);
expect(obj).to.have.property('name');
expect(str).to.include('hello');
expect(fn).to.throw(Error);
expect(arr).to.deep.equal([1, 2, 3]);
expect(obj).to.deep.include({ name: 'Alice' });

Sinon Mocking

const sinon = require('sinon');

describe('UserService', () => {
  let sandbox;
  beforeEach(() => { sandbox = sinon.createSandbox(); });
  afterEach(() => { sandbox.restore(); });

  it('fetches user from API', async () => {
    const stub = sandbox.stub(api, 'get').resolves({ name: 'Alice' });
    const user = await userService.getUser(1);
    expect(user.name).to.equal('Alice');
    expect(stub.calledOnce).to.be.true;
  });
});

Async Testing

it('should fetch data', async () => {
  const data = await fetchData();
  expect(data).to.have.property('id');
});

it('callback style', (done) => {
  fetchData((err, data) => {
    expect(err).to.be.null;
    done();
  });
});

Anti-Patterns

done()

sinon.createSandbox()

describe

this.timeout()

Quick Reference

npx mocha

npx mocha --watch

npx mocha --grep "login"

npx mocha --timeout 10000

npx mocha --recursive

Setup:

npm install mocha chai sinon --save-dev

Deep Patterns →

reference/playbook.md