Time control

[MFAshby]

Problem I need to solve

I want to control the current date and time in full system tests, for reproducible tests and to test edge cases around dates (e.g. leap days).

Solution I see

An API within aidbox, to set / clear a fixed time value. This value should be used throughout the application instead of the current date and time. This API should be enabled by a feature flag and not available in production deployments.

Alternatives I've considered, but they don't work

libfaketime installed on the postgresql server, however this causes some other issues with postgres, since any functions getting the date and time are affected, which affects scheduling behaviour, logging, which I don't want to interfere with. I want to affect only application-level data (e.g. created date and time on .Meta elements).

Patching postgres to introduce an API for controlling the current date and time. This would be very difficult to maintain.

Intercepting queries issues from aidbox and transforming them to fix the date and time. This is also difficult to maintain.

Additional context

[github-actions]

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