Qunit beforeEach, afterEach - async

Question

Since start(), stop() will be removed in Qunit 2.0, what is the alternative for async setups and teardowns via the beforeEach, afterEach methods? For instance, if I want the beforeEach to wait for a promise to be finished?

Answer 1

QUnit basically wants people to stop using the global methods (not just start() and stop(), but also test(), expect(), etc). So, as of version 1.16.0, you should always use either the global namespace (QUnit) or the assert API argument passed into the test() functions. This includes the new async control:

QUnit.test( "testing async action", function( assert ) {  // <-- note the `assert` argument here
    var done = assert.async();  // tell QUnit we're doing async actions and
                                // hold onto the function it returns for later

    setTimeout(function() {  // do some async stuff
        assert.ok( true, "This happened 100 ms later!" );

        done();  // using the function returned from `assert.async()` we 
                 // tell QUnit we're don with async actions
    }, 100);
});

If you are familiar with the old start() and stop() way of doing things, you should see that this is extremely similar, but more compartmentalized and extensible.

Because the async() method call is on the assert argument into the test, it cannot be used in the beforeEach() function. If you have an example of how you were doing that before, please post it and we can try to figure out how to git it into the new way.

UPDATE

My mistake previously, the assert object is being passed into the beforeEach and afterEach callbacks on modules, so you should be able to do the same logic that you would do for a test:

QUnit.module('set of tests', {
    beforeEach: function(assert) {
        var done = assert.async();
        doSomethingAsync(function() {
            done(); // tell QUnit you're good to go.
        });
    }
});

(tested in QUnit 1.17.1)