How to change the date/time in Python for all modules?
- by Felix Schwarz
When I write with business logic, my code often depends on the current time. For example the algorithm which looks at each unfinished order and checks if an invoice should be sent (which depends on the no of days since the job was ended). In these cases creating an invoice is not triggered by an explicit user action but by a background job.
Now this creates a problem for me when it comes to testing:
I can test invoice creation itself easily
However it is hard to create an order in a test and check that the background job identifies the correct orders at the correct time.
So far I found two solutions:
In the test setup, calculate the job dates relative to the current date. Downside: The code becomes quite complicated as there are no explicit dates written anymore. Sometimes the business logic is pretty complex for edge cases so it becomes hard to debug due to all these relative dates.
I have my own date/time accessor functions which I use throughout my code. In the test I just set a current date and all modules get this date. So I can simulate an order creation in February and check that the invoice is created in April easily. Downside: 3rd party modules do not use this mechanism so it's really hard to integrate+test these.
The second approach was way more successful to me after all. Therefore I'm looking for a way to set the time Python's datetime+time modules return. Setting the date is usually enough, I don't need to set the current hour or second (even though this would be nice).
Is there such a utility? Is there an (internal) Python API that I can use?
