Specify setup/teardown for each test individually

Is your feature request related to a problem or a nice-to-have?? Please describe.

Currently, we can:

1. Define a setup/teardown for a describe block by using before/after.
2. Define a setup/teardown for all it blocks by using beforeEach/afterEach.

There is no way to define a setup/teardown for one it block.

As a workaround, I’m putting the setup code inside the it block. Downside:

1. The setup code is mixed with the calculation.
2. The setup time is also counted in the timing.

Describe the solution you’d like

Some proposals:

1. Make it accept more arguments to define setup/teardown:

   it(
     "my test",
     () => {
       // setup
     },
     () => {
       // test
     },
     () => {
       // teardown
     }
   );
   // look better with an option object
   it({
     name: "my test",
     setup() {
       // ...
     },
     test() {
       // ...
     },
     teardown() {
       // ...
     }
   });
   

2. Add new block (or reuse before, after) inside it:

   it("my test", () => {
     itBefore(() => {
       // ...
     });
     // test
     itAfter(() => {
       // ...
     });
   });
   

3. Allows the test to emit an event to indicate the current phase:

   it("my test", function () {
     this.section("setup");
     // ...
     
     this.section("test");
     // ...
     
     this.section("teardown");
     // ...
   });
   

Describe alternatives you’ve considered

Additional context

This should be handy for dynamically-generated tests since they often have to read some data from the disk before running the actual test.

[eight04]

That is another workaround. It prints an additional line for each test as the downside:

[plroebuck]

Or perhaps more simply, just put a describe around the test (it) that you want to add hooks for setup/teardown. No changes required and backwards/forwards-compatible.