Rails - Added sub seconds to Time inspect

Apr 27, 2020

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Alkesh Ghorpade

I am a seasoned developer with over 9 years of experience in Ruby on Rails and Golang. My passion lies in tackling complex data structures and algorithm problems, always pushing myself to learn and grow. In my downtime, I find solace in the pages of books and the soothing sounds of a guitar. But I'm not just a one-trick pony! I love to stay active and challenge myself in other ways too. Whether it's on the football pitch, cricket field, table tennis table, or badminton court, I'm always up for some fun activities.

1 minute read

Ruby 2.7 added sub seconds to Time#inspect and separated it from Time#to_s.

Rails also added sub seconds to ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone#inspect.

This is particularly helpful when multiple time objects are created in a short interval. For e.g., when executing imports in parallel, or when we need to assert time differences in our test cases.

Before

Time.at(1587660977).in_time_zone.inspect
# => "Thu, 23 Apr 2020 16:56:17 UTC +00:00"

Time.at(1587660977, 456789123, :nsec).in_time_zone.inspect
# => "Thu, 23 Apr 2020 16:56:17 UTC +00:00"

After

Time.at(1587660977).in_time_zone.inspect
# => "Thu, 23 Apr 2020 16:56:17 UTC +00:00"

Time.at(1587660977, 456789123, :nsec).in_time_zone.inspect
# => "Thu, 23 Apr 2020 16:56:17.456789123 UTC +00:00"

Summary

As seen above the nsec part is not ignored anymore when we use inspect. This is useful for finer comparisons, assertions and usage with time across databases and systems.