WebDriverjs not loading url when used with mocha - google-chrome

Question

I'm currently working on writing some automated tests for a web app, using WebDriverJs and Mocha. When I remove anything relating to Mocha, it runs fine and does exactly what I'm expecting. However, as soon as I introduce the mocha elements into my code, Chrome will open, but then won't load the url and the test times out.
The code I'm using (with mocha implemented) is as follows:
"use strict";
var assert = require('assert');
var test = require('selenium-webdriver/testing');
var webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver');
var driver = new webdriver.Builder().usingServer().withCapabilities({'browserName': 'chrome' }).build();
before(function() {
driver.get('http://127.0.0.1:3000/');
});
test.describe('Login', function() {
test.it('should work', function()
{
var passLoginTest = require('./PassLoginTest');
passLoginTest(webdriver, driver).then(function(loggedIn){
assert.isTrue(loggedIn, 'successfully logged in');
});
driver.quit();
});
});
I've also tried using driver.get('http://127.0.0.1:3000/); outside of a before block, but it had the same result. I'm using Mocha v. 2.2.1 and Webdriver 2.45.1.

Answer 1

I ran into this too, also when using jasmine instead of mocha.
I experimented a bit with the versions of mocha and selenium-webdriver.
It turns out version 2.43 of selenium webdriver and up have this issue, below works well for me. So I settled on the last version that works ok. My package.json now has
...
"selenium-webdriver": "~2.42.1",
"mocha": "~2.2.4",
...

Answer 2

You should not be calling before "naked" like you do. You should do like you do with describe and it and use the version that is provided by selenium-webdriver/testing so:
test.before(function() {
driver.get('http://127.0.0.1:3000/');
});
The version of these calls provided by selenium-webdriver/testing are modified to wait for the driver to do its work before moving on. The "stock" (which I called "naked" above) version of these calls would require at a minimum that you return a promise or that you use a callback.