anybox.testing.datetime 0.5

Various utilities related to date and time for testing purposes.

This package allows to cheat with current time in tests. It has initially been used in Odoo to test workflows spanning over a long period of time.

Currently it mainly provides a datetime.set_now() method to fake the current time, and a datetime.real_now() to return back to the original time.

Usage

Before anything, the package must be imported in order to replace the regular datetime module with the modified one:

>>> import anybox.testing.datetime
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> import time

Let’s keep the real value of now around:

>>> start = datetime.now()
>>> start_t = time.time()
>>> start_s = time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
>>> start_l = time.localtime()
>>> start_c = time.ctime()

Then you can change the current time:

>>> datetime.set_now(datetime(2001, 01, 01, 3, 57, 0))
>>> datetime.now()
datetime(2001, 1, 1, 3, 57)
>>> datetime.today()
datetime(2001, 1, 1, 3, 57)

The time module goes along:

>>> datetime.fromtimestamp(time.time())
datetime(2001, 1, 1, 3, 57)

Note that you can expect a few microseconds difference (not displayed here because datetime.fromtimestamp ignores them).

Some other functions from the time module also return the current time:

>>> time.localtime()
time.struct_time(tm_year=2001, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=3, tm_min=57, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=0, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=-1)
>>> time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
'2001-01-01'
>>> time.ctime()
'Mon Jan  1 03:57:00 2001'
>>> time.asctime()
'Mon Jan  1 03:57:00 2001'
>>> time.gmtime()
time.struct_time(tm_year=2001, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=3, tm_min=57, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=0, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=-1)

The remaining behaviours are not altered

>>> time.localtime(0).tm_year
1970
>>> time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d', datetime(1999,9,9).timetuple())
'1999-09-09'
>>> time.ctime(5)
'Thu Jan  1 02:00:05 1970'
>>> time.asctime(time.localtime(5))
'Thu Jan  1 02:00:05 1970'
>>> time.gmtime(5.0)
time.struct_time(tm_year=1970, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=0)

Don’t forget afterwards to get back to the regular system clock, otherwise many pieces of code might get very suprised if the system clock looks as if it’s frozen:

>>> datetime.real_now()

Now let’s check it worked:

>>> now = datetime.now()
>>> now > start
True
>>> from datetime import timedelta
>>> now - start < timedelta(0, 0, 10000) # 10 ms
True

And with the time module:

>>> now_t = time.time()
>>> now_t > start_t
True
>>> now_t - start_t < 0.01 # 10 ms again
True
>>> time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d') == start_s
True
>>> time.localtime().tm_mday == start_l.tm_mday
True

Other constructors are still available (this is a non regression test):

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.time(3, 57, 0)
datetime.time(3, 57)
>>> datetime.datetime(2013, 1, 1, 3, 57, 0)
datetime(2013, 1, 1, 3, 57)
>>> datetime.date(2013, 1, 1)
datetime.date(2013, 1, 1)

Behind the hood

Our replacement class is the one loaded from the datetime module, but instances of the original datetime class behave exactly as instances of our datetime.datetime. This is needed because most computational methods, actually return an object of the original datetime class. This works with python >= 2.6 only.

First let’s check that our class is a subclass of the original one. If this fails, this test does not mean anything anymore:

>>> datetime.datetime is datetime.original_datetime
False
>>> issubclass(datetime.datetime, datetime.original_datetime)
True

Then let’s demonstrate the behaviour:

>>> odt = datetime.original_datetime(2012, 1, 1)
>>> isinstance(odt, datetime.datetime)
True
>>> issubclass(datetime.original_datetime, datetime.datetime)
True

We’ll need a tzinfo subclass from now on.

>>> from datetime import tzinfo
>>> class mytzinfo(tzinfo):
...     def utcoffset(self, dt):
...         return timedelta(hours=2)
...     def dst(self, dt):
...         return timedelta(0)

Compatibility

Over the lifespan of this development toolkit module, we’ve had to ensure compatibility with several subsystems

logging

In the logging module, time.localtime is used as a method. We just check it works

>>> import logging
>>> datetime.datetime.set_now(datetime.datetime(2000, 1, 1))
>>> logging.Formatter().converter().tm_year >= 2014
True
>>> datetime.datetime.real_now()

SQLite

Also, sqlite3 does recognize our datetime and date classes as if they were the original ones:

>>> import sqlite3
>>> cnx = sqlite3.connect(':memory:')
>>> cr = cnx.cursor()
>>> cr = cr.execute("CREATE TABLE dates (dt text, d text)")
>>> dt = datetime.datetime(2013, 1, 25, 12, 34, 0)
>>> d = datetime.date(2013, 4, 7)
>>> cr = cr.execute("INSERT INTO dates VALUES (?, ?)", (dt, d))
>>> cr = cr.execute("SELECT dt, d from dates")
>>> cr.fetchall()
[(u'2013-01-25 12:34:00', u'2013-04-07')]

Restore original time

Now let’s try this again with the original ones:

>>> dt = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> isinstance(dt, datetime.original_datetime)
True
>>> d = datetime.date.today()
>>> cr = cr.execute("INSERT INTO dates VALUES (?, ?)", (dt, d))
>>> cr = cr.execute("SELECT dt, d from dates")
>>> res = cr.fetchall() # can't check the value, it changes a lot !

Data streaming aka pickle

The mock_dt support pickling:

>>> import pickle
>>> from StringIO import StringIO
>>> stream = StringIO()
>>> v = datetime.datetime(2013, 1, 1, 3, 57, 0)
>>> pickle.dump(v, stream)
>>> stream.seek(0)
>>> v2 = pickle.load(stream)
>>> v == v2
True
>>> type(v2)
<class 'anybox.testing.datetime.mock_dt.datetime'>
>>> stream = StringIO()
>>> v = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> pickle.dump(v, stream)
>>> stream.seek(0)
>>> v2 = pickle.load(stream)
>>> v == v2
True
>>> type(v2)
<class 'anybox.testing.datetime.mock_dt.datetime'>
>>> stream = StringIO()
>>> datetime.datetime.set_now(datetime.datetime(2001, 01, 01, 3, 57, 0))
>>> v = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> pickle.dump(v, stream)
>>> stream.seek(0)
>>> v2 = pickle.load(stream)
>>> v == v2
True
>>> type(v2)
<class 'anybox.testing.datetime.mock_dt.datetime'>

Test

This README is also a doctest. To test it and other doctests for this package, simply install Nose and run:

$ nosetests

Changes

0.5 (2015-04-12)

• Added support for time.* functions

• #6: fixed picking error

0.4.2 (2013-06-11)

• A few improvements in the doc

0.4.1 (2013-04-24)

• #3: fixed compatibility problem with sqlite3 (spotted via IPython/IPdb)

0.3.1 (2012-11-28)

• #1: tested code using time zone optional arg of now() doesn’t break any more (no real time zone support, though)

0.3 (2012-11-23)

• Fixed the problem that datetime objects generated from computations used to fail isinstance tests.

0.2.1 (2012-11-22)

• Fixed issue with datetime.time masking

0.1 (2012-07-15)

• initial version