State transition on timed event?

[nigel-lowry]

(Since Github updated their UI I can't work out how to search the issues anymore so I apologise if this is a duplicate.)

Does this gem support firing a state transition in response to a certain instance of time passing? For example, if I had an auction which ends on Sunday night at 9pm, does this gem support changing the state of the auction from 'open' to 'closed' when the end time is reached?

I can see other ways of achieving the same thing by having a periodic job that checks through all 'open' auctions and closes them, but just wanted to know if this gem supported something similar already.

[hadees]

I would also like a feature like this. I'm working on an e-commerce site and I'd like to have a prelaunch state that changes to launched when the product goes on sale.

The only way I could think of doing it with out using some sort of delayed job would be for state machine to be smart enough to switch the state retroactively the next time it is checked. That seems like a poor option though.

Maybe what we really need is an example showing the best practices for this.