Removed `timecop` gem in favor of `travel_to` #351

seanpdoyle · 2014-05-23T19:12:44Z

With the release of rails 4.1, Timecop.freeze can be replaced with travel_to

Timecop.freeze 1.week.ago do
  # time sensitive code
end

travel_to 1.week.ago do
  # time sensitive code
end

Read more in the TimeHelpers module

inspired by http://brandonhilkert.com/blog/rails-4-1-travel-to-test-helper

croaky · 2014-05-23T19:13:52Z

Oh that's cool. This makes sense to me but have we done it on any apps yet?

seanpdoyle · 2014-05-23T19:16:10Z

@croaky Also, I'm not sure how we've gone about communicating dependency removals in the past, but we'd probably want to point users to the docs for TimeHelpers (probably in the README or CHANGELOG).

I'd expect users of suspenders have grown accustom to timecop being bundled by default.

calebhearth · 2014-05-23T19:35:24Z

Timecop does other things as well. If we need freeze for example, we still need the gem.

seanpdoyle · 2014-05-23T19:38:24Z

@calebthompson freeze could be replaced by travel_to with a block couldn't it?

calebhearth · 2014-05-23T19:44:28Z

Looks like, yeah. The only things in the README other than that are scale, which I can't see a general use case for, and safe_mode which I'd love to have be default.

Works for me, but I haven't used it either. As far as documenting the change, NEWS.md makes sense.

seanpdoyle · 2014-05-23T19:52:20Z

NEWS.md

@@ -1,3 +1,12 @@
+1.12.0 (May 23, 2014)
+
+* Included [formulaic](https://github.com/thoughtbot/formulaic) for integration


@calebthompson @croaky I've never written release notes before. Is this good enough?

Changes like this require a semver bump, right?

seanpdoyle · 2014-05-23T20:02:21Z

@croaky good to merge and bump the release? Should we ask for more opinions?

croaky · 2014-05-26T21:16:29Z

@seanpdoyle I'd like to hold off on merging until someone reports using this successfully on one of or more of our apps.

seanpdoyle · 2014-06-26T19:16:34Z

Apparently the two behave differently.

Timecop.freeze sets Time.now to the given time and stops the flow of time within the block.
travel_to only sets Time.now to the given time. Time continues to flow like normal.

I'm not sure of how to reproduce the freeze behavior with travel_to

croaky · 2014-07-20T18:46:53Z

@seanpdoyle @arunagw @sgrif @sikachu @jferris How are we feeling about this PR? Can Timecop definitely be replaced by travel_to?

calebhearth · 2014-07-22T19:45:35Z

Just ran into a scenario where travel_to wouldn't work:

Google's oauth provides an access token which expires. As part of the refresh process, google sends an amount of time for which the new token will be valid in the form of a number of seconds.

To verify that the expiration time is properly set to now + number_of_seconds, I need to freeze time as well as travel to a known base time.

croaky · 2014-07-22T20:03:14Z

It seems like for now, we should probably keep Timecop in Suspenders. I think now might be a good time to close the PR. If others feel differently, please feel free to re-open.

sgrif · 2014-07-23T00:36:56Z

Is the concern whether travel_to must work for all cases, or whether it works for the general case? Apps can always add timecop if they need it. clearance also doesn't work for all cases, but it's our default -- I have no strong feelings on the subject, as I personally avoid both timecop and travel_to, but just interested by the motivations.

croaky · 2014-07-23T00:51:16Z

The gems we have in Suspenders should be gems we think we need on the majority of new apps. Clearance is our default choice for authentication but is not in Suspenders.

If we don't think we need time freezing by default in projects, lets remove Timecop. I thought we did feel we need it, though.

What do you do instead, @sgrif, if you're avoiding both Timecop and travel_to?

sgrif · 2014-07-23T00:52:45Z

Dependency injection. :)

mike-burns · 2019-12-04T16:11:09Z

How have we been testing OAuth lately? Have we been using timecop in these tests, or some other form of stubbing? It might be worth revisiting this now.

jmeinerz · 2020-01-17T17:06:28Z

@mike-burns this may indeed be a good time to revisit this. In fact freeze_time was added to ActiveSupport in Rails v5.2

thiagoa · 2021-08-26T13:12:50Z

It seems most issues reported here have been solved by the Rails team.

freeze_time has been implemented in TimeHelpers
safe mode is no longer needed (i.e. enforce the use of a block when freezing the time) because time stubs are automatically cleared on teardown
Nesting travel methods is still not possible. However, I don't think we should necessarily support that use case. Consciously opting for Timecop is always a choice in these rare cases.

croaky

A lot's changed in 9 years :) Go for it!

seanpdoyle · 2023-09-29T16:44:59Z

It is time.

With the release of `rails` 4.1, `Timecop.freeze` can be replaced with `travel_to` ```ruby Timecop.freeze 1.week.ago do # time sensitive code end travel_to 1.week.ago do # time sensitive code end ``` Read more in the [TimeHelpers](https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/a6f55fe257512731d7f3f41976648d99e9ec95be/activesupport/lib/active_support/testing/time_helpers.rb#L43) module.

stevepolitodesign · 2024-01-12T20:04:14Z

Noting we still have a reference to Timecop here:

https://github.com/thoughtbot/suspenders/blob/main/templates/spec_helper.rb

However, this will be removed in https://github.com/thoughtbot/suspenders/tree/suspenders-3-0-0-testing-generator

seanpdoyle · 2024-01-12T20:18:42Z

Thank you for catching that @stevepolitodesign! Are you interested in opening a PR to remove that line in the short term?

If not, I'm happy to open one.

Follow-up to #351 Now that `Timecop` has been removed, we no longer need to configure RSpec to use it.

stevepolitodesign · 2024-01-12T21:52:06Z

@seanpdoyle I've opened #1155 to address this.

seanpdoyle reviewed May 23, 2014
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croaky closed this Jul 22, 2014

derekprior deleted the sd-remove-timecop branch January 7, 2015 22:23

composerinteralia restored the sd-remove-timecop branch April 6, 2020 22:37

composerinteralia reopened this Apr 6, 2020

Base automatically changed from master to main March 5, 2021 19:05

thiagoa force-pushed the main branch from 6ad77cd to 2ac46d3 Compare January 28, 2022 15:18

seanpdoyle force-pushed the sd-remove-timecop branch from ea3f125 to cf27bf6 Compare September 28, 2023 23:03

seanpdoyle requested review from stevepolitodesign and thiagoa as code owners September 28, 2023 23:03

croaky approved these changes Sep 29, 2023

View reviewed changes

seanpdoyle force-pushed the sd-remove-timecop branch from cf27bf6 to 229424e Compare September 29, 2023 16:04

seanpdoyle changed the base branch from main to rake-standard-fix September 29, 2023 16:04

Base automatically changed from rake-standard-fix to main September 29, 2023 16:43

seanpdoyle force-pushed the sd-remove-timecop branch from 229424e to 830b9ec Compare September 29, 2023 16:45

seanpdoyle merged commit 55cb5c2 into main Sep 29, 2023
1 check passed

seanpdoyle deleted the sd-remove-timecop branch September 29, 2023 17:01

stevepolitodesign added a commit that referenced this pull request Jan 12, 2024

Remove reference to Timecop from spec_helper.rb

05f05ac

Follow-up to #351 Now that `Timecop` has been removed, we no longer need to configure RSpec to use it.

stevepolitodesign mentioned this pull request Jan 12, 2024

Remove reference to Timecop from spec_helper.rb #1155

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Removed `timecop` gem in favor of `travel_to` #351

Removed `timecop` gem in favor of `travel_to` #351

seanpdoyle commented May 23, 2014

croaky commented May 23, 2014

seanpdoyle commented May 23, 2014

calebhearth commented May 23, 2014

seanpdoyle commented May 23, 2014

calebhearth commented May 23, 2014

seanpdoyle May 23, 2014

calebhearth May 23, 2014

seanpdoyle commented May 23, 2014

croaky commented May 26, 2014

seanpdoyle commented Jun 26, 2014

croaky commented Jul 20, 2014

calebhearth commented Jul 22, 2014

croaky commented Jul 22, 2014

sgrif commented Jul 23, 2014

croaky commented Jul 23, 2014

sgrif commented Jul 23, 2014

mike-burns commented Dec 4, 2019

jmeinerz commented Jan 17, 2020

thiagoa commented Aug 26, 2021

croaky left a comment

seanpdoyle commented Sep 29, 2023

stevepolitodesign commented Jan 12, 2024

seanpdoyle commented Jan 12, 2024

stevepolitodesign commented Jan 12, 2024

		@@ -1,3 +1,12 @@
		1.12.0 (May 23, 2014)

		* Included [formulaic](https://github.com/thoughtbot/formulaic) for integration

Removed timecop gem in favor of travel_to #351

Removed timecop gem in favor of travel_to #351

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seanpdoyle commented May 23, 2014

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seanpdoyle commented Sep 29, 2023

stevepolitodesign commented Jan 12, 2024

seanpdoyle commented Jan 12, 2024

stevepolitodesign commented Jan 12, 2024

Removed `timecop` gem in favor of `travel_to` #351

Removed `timecop` gem in favor of `travel_to` #351