Discontinued
This repo is not longer maintained
Delorean 
Delorean lets you travel in time with Ruby by mocking Time.now
Marty:: Wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?
Doc:: The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?
Install
$ [sudo] gem install delorean
Or add it to your Gemfile, etc.
Usage
Let's travel in time!
require 'delorean'
# Date.today => Wed Feb 24
Delorean.time_travel_to "1 month ago" # Date.today => Sun Jan 24
Delorean.back_to_the_present # Date.today => Wed Feb 24
With a block:
Delorean.time_travel_to("1 month ago") do
# Inside the block, Time.now => Sun Jan 24 00:34:32 +0100 2010
sleep(5)
# And the time still goes by... Time.now => Sun Jan 24 00:34:37 +0100 2010
end
# Outside the block, Time.now => Wed Feb 24 00:34:35 +0100 2010
You can also jump which is like sleep but without losing time
# Time.now => Wed Feb 24 00:34:04 +0100 2010
Delorean.jump 30
# Time.now => Wed Feb 24 00:34:34 +0100 2010
Testing
Time-travelling can be extremely useful when you're testing your application.
For example, in RSpec you may find convenient to include Delorean's DSL in your spec_helper.rb:
RSpec.configure do |config|
config.include Delorean
...
Now you can time-travel in your examples, like this:
it "should show latest created user" do
time_travel_to(3.minutes.ago) { create_user :name => "John" }
time_travel_to(5.minutes.ago) { create_user :name => "Chris" }
get 'show'
response.should have_text("John")
response.should_not have_text("Chris")
end
Don't forget to go back to the present after each example:
after(:each) { back_to_the_present }
or its alternate syntax:
after(:each) { back_to_1985 }
Credits
Delorean image based on an original by Giancarlo Pitocco.
Copyright (c) 2012 Luismi CavallΓ©, Sergio Gil and BeBanjo S.L. released under the MIT license