From: Jay Levitt <jay+news@...>
Date: 2006-09-06T06:25:16+09:00
Subject: Stubbing Time.now with Mocha

Mocha seems a great way to stub Time.now for testing expiration dates, etc.
with rspec.  I can get it to stub a single time easily:

  Time.stubs(:now).returns(Time.at(1))

but what I'd really like to do is do that multiple times during a test:

  specify "with an expired cookie should return nil"
    Time.stubs(:now).returns(Time.parse("Jan 1 2001"))
    louie.login
    cookie = louie.remember_me

    Time.stubs(:now).returns(Time.parse("Oct 1 2001"))
    louie.login_with_cookie(cookie).should_be_nil
  end

However, only the first stubs call has any effect.  I've tried stubbing it
to a FakeTime object:

  Time.stubs(:now).returns(FakeTime.now)

but it only looks at the value of FakeTime.now when the stub is created.
Is there a way using Mocha/Stubba to stub a routine and have it call
another for the return value?  I've tried creating procs/lambdas, but I
must be doing something wrong - I get an infinite recursion.

Jay Levitt