SetUp and TearDown
Sometimes you will need to delete a test database at the end of each test in a suite, or create an empty database at the beginning of each test. Operations like this can be performed by writing special fixtures that perform these functions in their constructors. These fixtures can then be invoked in the SetUp and TearDown pages of the suite. See <Fit Nesse .Full Reference Guide .User Guide .Writing Acceptance Tests .Special Pages.To perform operations at the beginning or end of an entire suite, rather than for each test, define the operations on pages named SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown.
SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown are associated with a test page by "Uncle Inheritance" as described in <Fit Nesse .Full Reference Guide .User Guide .Writing Acceptance Tests .Special Pages.
A suite has many different test pages and can contain subsuites, and it is possible that some will have different SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown pages.
By default only the 'nearest' uncle SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown pages are executed. Therefore tests in a suite are organized into groups that share the same SuiteSetup and SuiteTearDown pages. The tests are executed in those groups, with the SuiteSetUp preceding them, and the SuiteTearDown following them. This means the same SuiteSetup or SuiteTearDown is potentially excuted multiple times, once for each group.
This behaviour can be customized by defining a variable ALL_UNCLE_SUITE_SETUPS and give it the value true in the root of the suite. The effect of this definition is that all SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown up in the hierarchy (i.e. all uncle pages with these names) are executed before each test. Inside the suite the highest SuiteSetUp is added first, followed by lower ones just before the first test in the (sub)suite requiring them. And the nearest SuiteTearDown is executed immediately after the last test in the (sub)suite. So each SuiteSetUp and SuiteTearDown is executed only once, immediately before (or after) the (sub)suite that requires them.