By default, mocha looks for files in the test directory:

tree
.
0 directories, 0 files

mocha
Error: cannot resolve path (or pattern) 'test'

If you have files in subdirectories of test, you’ll need to pass the recursive flag:

mocha --recursive

What if you want to specify tests in a different directory?

You can pass the directory as a CLI argument:

mocha another/directory

Glob

Now what if you want to match files like test/foo.spec.js and test/bar.spec.js?

Easy! Use a glob expression:

mocha 'test/*.spec.js'

And if you need to recurse through all nested directories:

mocha 'test/**/*.spec.js'

But what if you want to match all files in test except for exclude.js?

You’ll need to negate the filename in the pattern:

mocha 'test/**/!(exclude).js'

Finally, if you need to ignore node_modules and match files like baz.spec.js and qux.spec.js in the project root:

mocha '{,!(node_modules)/**/}*.spec.js'

For more information on globs, check out glob-primer.