Clock – time provider for midPoint

Last modified 18 Feb 2026 10:59 +01:00
EXPERIMENTAL
This feature is experimental. It means that it is not intended for production use. The feature is not finished. It is not stable. The implementation may contain bugs, the configuration may change at any moment without any warning and it may not work at all. Use at your own risk. This feature is not covered by midPoint support. In case that you are interested in supporting development of this feature, please consider purchasing midPoint Platform subscription.
Table of Contents

The Clock class is a centralized time provider used throughout midPoint for scheduling, certification, and expression evaluation. You can use it for time overrides during testing.

What is the Clock class

Clock is a central utility that supplies the current time to all parts of midPoint. By default, it simply proxies the system clock, but you can make it return an artificial time. This makes it possible to:

  • Run time‑dependent logic (certification stage transitions, deadline reminders, scheduled tasks) without changing the host machine clock.

  • Write deterministic unit or integration tests that involve "now"‑based calculations.

The class is deliberately placed in the common package so that any component (model, provisioning, UI, background tasks) can obtain a consistent notion of "now".

The Clock class documentation

Typical use cases

Here are some use cases for your inspiration.

Inject the clock in Spring components
@Service
public class CertificationService {

    @Autowired
    private Clock clock;          // injected by Spring

    public void runStageTransition(Task task) {
        XMLGregorianCalendar now = clock.currentTimeXMLGregorianCalendar();
        // ... use 'now' to evaluate stage deadlines ...
    }
}

The @Autowired injection shown works because the Clock bean is defined in the core Spring configuration of midPoint.

Override time in tests
@SpringBootTest
class CertificationCampaignTest {

    @Autowired
    private Clock clock;

    @Test
    void testDeadlineReminder() {
        // Freeze time at 2025‑03‑01T10:00:00Z
        clock.override(Instant.parse("2025-03-01T10:00:00Z").toEpochMilli());

        // Execute the code that checks "now"
        campaignService.checkDeadlines();

        // Assertions...
    }
}

The override(…​) replaces the underlying time stamp and every call to clock.currentTime…​ inside the tested code sees the artificial moment. This eliminates the timing issues and removes the need for OS-level clock manipulation.

Shift time relative to the current moment
// Move the clock 48 hours forward for a long‑running batch job
clock.overrideDuration("P2D");   // ISO‑8601 period of 2 days

The offset is cumulative; subsequent calls to overrideDuration add to the existing shift.

Notes for developers

  • Do not use Clock to manipulate time globally in production environment. Overrides are intended for testing and controlled simulation environments.

  • For certain "special" timestamps, such as those in audit logs, midPoint stores the real system time to keep an immutable record regardless of any Clock override.

Adjusting the internal time of midPoint does not affect all functions midPoint uses. That is why using Clock is considered experimental and you may encounter inconsistent behavior.

Summary

Clock provides a single source of truth for the current time throughout midPoint, enabling you to override or shift that time. This design enables testing of time‑sensitive features, such as certification campaigns, while keeping production behaviour identical to the JVM clock. Use the time manipulation Clock provides only in test contexts and controlled simulations.

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