Having lots of queries in my project that depend on Time.now and having Time.now scattered around my code was starting to cause me testing/bdding/specing headaches. RSpec stubbing to the rescue! With the below helper you can code like Marty Mcfly.

Throw this file in spec/support/time_helper.rb

require 'rspec/mocks'

class Time
  DEFAULT_STOP_ZONE = ActiveSupport::TimeZone["UTC"]
  def Time.stop
    RSpec::Mocks::setup(self)
    @stopped_time = DEFAULT_STOP_ZONE.now
    Time.zone = DEFAULT_STOP_ZONE
    Time.zone.stub!(:now).and_return {
      @stopped_time
    }
    Time.stub!(:now).and_return {@stopped_time}
  end

  def Time.advance duration
    raise "You have not stopped time yet McFly!" unless @stopped_time
    @stopped_time = @stopped_time.since duration
  end

  def Time.regress duration
    raise "You have not stopped time yet McFly!" unless @stopped_time
    @stopped_time = @stopped_time.since -duration
  end
end

Then in your spec can write things like below

describe Foo do
    before :each do

        Time.stop

        (1..10).each do |i|
            Factory :foo, :created_at => Time.now.ago(i.hours)
        end

        (1..10).each do |i|
            Factory :foo, :created_at => Time.now.since(i.hours)
        end

    end

    it "should have 10 elements created in the future" do
        Foo.where{created_at > my{Time.now}}.count.should == 10
    end

    it "should have 10 elements created in the past" do
        Foo.where{created_at < my{Time.now}}.count.should == 10
    end

    describe "advancing time" do
        before :each do
            Time.advance 1.5.hours
        end

        it "should have 9 elements created in the future" do
            Foo.where{created_at > my{Time.now}}.count.should == 10
        end

        it "should have 11 elements created in the past" do
            Foo.where{created_at < my{Time.now}}.count.should == 10
        end

    end

    describe "regressing time" do
        before :each do
            Time.regress 1.5.hours
        end

        it "should have 11 elements created in the future" do
            Foo.where{created_at > my{Time.now}}.count.should == 10
        end

        it "should have 9 elements created in the past" do
            Foo.where{created_at < my{Time.now}}.count.should == 10
        end

    end

end 

The solution is good as long as you don’t care about absolute time. Sometimes you will need to set the current absoute time. You can do this through the stopped_time accessor monkey patched into Time.