timecop causes jquery-ui-datepicker to not work until timecop is uninstalled

[matthargett]

Ran into this conflict on our project. We're using the JQuery UI datepicker for a calendar control. After Timecop.install() is called, the datepicker will no longer "show". As soon as Timecop.uninstall() is called, the seemingly-batched show commands to the datepicker finally get sent and the calendar control shows.

Timecop.install();
$("#search_case_filed_start_date").datepicker("show"); // does not show, no exceptions or JS errors shown in browser
Timecop.uninstall(); // finally shows after uninstall

[jamesarosen]

Can you link to any places where datepicker might use setTimeout or similar?

Have you tried using Sinon's fake clock support?

[matthargett]

Haven't tried Sinon -- we wanted to use Timecop on both the server and front-end JS side. We're using Timecop within Selenium.

The code within the jquery datepicker does indeed use setTimeout in one place, here:

        // deffered render of the years select (to avoid flashes on Firefox)
        if( inst.yearshtml ){
            origyearshtml = inst.yearshtml;
            setTimeout(function(){
                //assure that inst.yearshtml didn't change.
                if( origyearshtml === inst.yearshtml && inst.yearshtml ){
                    inst.dpDiv.find("select.ui-datepicker-year:first").replaceWith(inst.yearshtml);
                }
                origyearshtml = inst.yearshtml = null;
            }, 0);
        }

[jamesarosen]

Timecop doesn't modify the global setTimeout and setInterval implementations. It's possible that it should.

Sinon's date faking does and we've had good results with it in front-end testing (both in the browser and via PhantomJS). There is a sinon npm module. I'd give it a shot.

I'd be happy to take a pull request to fix this. I haven't actually abandoned this project, but I'm leaning towards deprecating it in favor of Sinon.