Freezing Joda Time

Once upon a time Mark Needham wrote about freezing Joda Time. Mark gives all the important details for freezing time (which is often helpful for testing), but I came up with some additional code that I like to add on top of his example.

Two things bother me about Mark's example. First of all, I always like the last line of my test to be the assertion. It's not a law, but it is a guideline I like to follow. Secondly, I don't like having to remember that I need to reset the time back to following the system clock.

I came up with the following idea. It's definitely a poor man's closure, but it does the job for me.

    
    @Test
    public void shouldFreezeTime() {
        Freeze.timeAt("2008-09-04").thawAfter(new Snippet() {{
            assertEquals(new DateTime(2008, 9, 4, 1, 0, 0, 0), new DateTime());
        }});
    }

The Freeze class is very simple:

    public class Freeze {

        public static Freeze timeAt(String dateTimeString) {
            DateTimeUtils.setCurrentMillisFixed(JodaDateTime.create(dateTimeString).getMillis());
            return new Freeze();
        }

        public void thawAfter(Snippet snippet) {
            DateTimeUtils.setCurrentMillisSystem();
        }
    }

The Snippet class is even more simple:

    public class Snippet {}

Using this code I can keep my assertions as close to the end of the test method as possible, and it's not possible to forget to reset the time back to the system clock.