Overriding Cypress' before and after methods - testing

Question

We are using Cypress.io to build our automation suite. We have a requirement to seed our database before every test and to clear the data afterward. This could be done like below.
describe('Our test suite', function() {
before(function () {
//loadDbSeed is a custom command that will load the seed file based on the spec file
seed = cy.loadDbSeed()
cy.task('seed:db', seed)
})
it('should be true', function() {
//Some test with some action followed by an assertion
cy.visit('/some-page')
cy.get('[data-cy="identifier"]')
.click()
expect(true).to.equal(true)
})
after(function () {
// clearDb is a custom command that will clear out the DB.
// We are still debating if we must clear the DB after the tests.
// But we might still need to do some common actions for the entire suite after
cy.clearDb()
})
})
The problem we see is that the same before and after operations will be required for all our test suites. So we would like to override these methods so that our tests are something like this.
describe('Our test suite', function() {
before(function () {
// DB seeding is done automatically
// Write only custom before steps required for this test
})
it('should be true', function() {
//Some test with some action followed by an assertion
cy.visit('/some-page')
cy.get('[data-cy="identifier"]')
.click()
expect(true).to.equal(true)
})
after(function () {
// DB clearing is done automatically
// Write only custom after steps required for this test
})
})
How do we achieve this? I have been digging around in the Cypress code and haven't found anything obvious.

Answer 1

If you look at the Cypress docs, using after isn't recommended - Cypress Docs. I'd caution against setting data globally, will you really need it for every test? If you need to enter data on a per-test basis at some point, will that conflict with this global data? You could do something like this on a per test basis:
describe('Our test suite', function() {
beforeEach(function () {
cy.then(async () => {
await MyDatabaseService.resetdata()
await MyDatabaseService.createSomeData()
});
});
it('should be true', function() {
//Some test with some action followed by an assertion
})
})
I've also had to nest some tests as follows when specific tests needed specific data (sorry if some of the formatting here is a bit out, hopefully it'll make sense!):
describe('Our test suite', function() {
beforeEach(function () {
cy.then(async () => {
await MyDatabaseService.resetdata()
await MyDatabaseService.createSomeData()
});
});
it('should be true', function() {
//Some test with some action followed by an assertion
});
describe('These tests need more data, this is a nested describe', function () {
before(function () {
cy.then(async () => {
await MyDatabaseService.addSomeMoreData()
});
it('this test uses the extra data', function () {
// Do some funky tests here
});
});
});
})
For the second tests above, the test will run all three database actions.
Upshot is, if you clear data before you run your tests then it makes things much clearer.
I hope that helps. I'm new to Cypress myself and it can be hard to drop that (bad?) habits we've used for some time in Selenium!