Unit Testing: DateTime.Now

Question

I have some unit tests that expects the 'current time' to be different than DateTime.Now and I don't want to change the computer's time, obviously.

What's the best strategy to achieve this?

Answer 1

The best strategy is to wrap the current time in an abstraction and inject that abstraction into the consumer.

---

Alternatively, you can also define a time abstraction as an Ambient Context:

public abstract class TimeProvider
{
    private static TimeProvider current =
        DefaultTimeProvider.Instance;

    public static TimeProvider Current
    {
       get { return TimeProvider.current; }
       set 
       {
           if (value == null)
           {
               throw new ArgumentNullException("value");
           }
           TimeProvider.current = value; 
       }
   }

   public abstract DateTime UtcNow { get; }

   public static void ResetToDefault()
   {    
       TimeProvider.current = DefaultTimeProvider.Instance;
   }            
}

This will enable you to consume it like this:

var now = TimeProvider.Current.UtcNow;

In a unit test, you can replace TimeProvider.Current with a Test Double/Mock object. Example using Moq:

var timeMock = new Mock<TimeProvider>();
timeMock.SetupGet(tp => tp.UtcNow).Returns(new DateTime(2010, 3, 11));
TimeProvider.Current = timeMock.Object;

However, when unit testing with static state, always remember to tear down your fixture by calling TimeProvider.ResetToDefault().