Path: | README.rdoc |
Last Update: | Thu May 26 10:02:01 -0400 2011 |
A gem providing "time travel" and "time freezing" capabilities, making it dead simple to test time-dependent code. It provides a unified method to mock Time.now, Date.today, and DateTime.now in a single call.
gem install timecop
Run a time-sensitive test
joe = User.find(1) joe.purchase_home() assert !joe.mortgage_due? # move ahead a month and assert that the mortgage is due Timecop.freeze(Date.today + 30) do assert joe.mortgage_due? end
Set the time for the test environment of a rails app — this is particularly helpful if your whole application is time-sensitive. It allows you to build your test data at a single point in time, and to move in/out of that time as appropriate (within your tests)
in config/environments/test.rb
config.after_initialize do # Set Time.now to September 1, 2008 10:05:00 AM (at this instant), but allow it to move forward t = Time.local(2008, 9, 1, 10, 5, 0) Timecop.travel(t) end
freeze is used to statically mock the concept of now. As your program executes, Time.now will not change unless you make subsequent calls into the Timecop API. travel, on the other hand, computes an offset between what we currently think Time.now is (recall that we support nested traveling) and the time passed in. It uses this offset to simulate the passage of time. To demonstrate, consider the following code snippets:
new_time = Time.local(2008, 9, 1, 12, 0, 0) Timecop.freeze(new_time) sleep(10) new_time == Time.now # ==> true Timecop.return # "turn off" Timecop Timecop.travel(new_time) sleep(10) new_time == Time.now # ==> false