Why use Time.current over Time.zone.now in Rails, when Time.zone is always set?

Question

The documentation for Time.current says:

Returns Time.zone.now when Time.zone or config.time_zone are set, otherwise just returns Time.now.

# File activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/time/calculations.rb, line 36
def current
  ::Time.zone ? ::Time.zone.now : ::Time.now
end

But when is Time.zone ever not set in Rails?

# Set Time.zone default to the specified zone and make Active Record auto-convert to this zone.
# Run "rake -D time" for a list of tasks for finding time zone names. Default is UTC.
# config.time_zone = 'Berlin'

I have commented out config.time_zoneand I still get Time.zone equal to 'UTC' as it apparently sets that by default as the comment mentions. So then, what is the point of using Time.current over Time.zone.now?

PS: I'm observing this on Rails 4.1.16

Answer 1

The short answer is there is no difference except cleaner/shorter syntax if you are using Rails as is.

Time.zone_default gets initialized in ActiveSupport::Railtie via active_support.initialize_time_zone. More info on railtie initialization process here.

My guess for reason of this check is that as a framework it is accounting for situation where someone removed this active_support.initialize_time_zone from their rails boot process. In that case Time.zone would be nil.