On 32bit systems, the maximum representable
Time
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is 2038-01-19 03:14:07 in UTC or 2038-01-19 04:14:07 in CET. If you try to instantiate a Time with any later value, Ruby will raise an ArgumentError.
If you need to represent later time values, use the
DateTime
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class. This is also what Rails does when it loads a record from the database that has a DATETIME value which Time cannot represent. Note that there are some
subtle differences
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between the APIs of Time and DateTime. Also DateTime is implemented in Ruby, while Time is implemented in C, making Time much more performant. So don't always use DateTime because it's more awesome all of the time, because it is not.
Our favorite time travel gem
Timecop
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works with both Time and DateTime.
