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Issue in getting the time difference between two variables

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Jan 30.2012

I have two textboxes that inputted time, and I want to get the difference between two time.

for example:

$IN = 13:35;
$OUT = 17:35;

$OTHours = ($OUT – $IN);

$OTHours = 4.00;

and it is correct, but I have a scenario like this:

$IN = 21:35;
$OUT = 05:35;

$OTHours = -16.00;

it should be 8.00.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Thank you..

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PHP

6 Comments(s) ↴

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@ssystemsJan 30.2012 — Would this work for you?

[code=php]
$reference = '2012-01-01';
$start = strtotime($reference . ' ' . $in);
$end = strtotime($reference . ' ' . $out);
$difference = date('H:i', $end-$start);
[/code]
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@NogDogJan 30.2012 — If using a reasonably current version of PHP (>= 5.3.0), you can use [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.diff.php]Datetime::diff()[/url] to handle this. If not, you'll probably want to convert each time to a UNIX timestamp integer via strtotime(), get the difference (which will be in seconds), then divide by 3600 to get the hours.
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@newphpcoderauthorJan 30.2012 — Hi...

Now, I think i need to put also the date like:

$IN = '2012-01-13 21:35'

$OUT = '2012-01-14 05:35'

Can you give me example to get the time difference using strtotime?

Thank you
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@ssystemsJan 30.2012 — I thought I just gave it to you.

[CODE]

$IN = '2012-01-13 21:35'
$OUT = '2012-01-14 05:35'

$start = strtotime($IN);
$end = strtotime($OUT );
$difference = $end - $start
$hour_difference = $difference / 3600;
[/CODE]

did it a line a time so you can follow.
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@newphpcoderauthorFeb 06.2012 — I tried that when i got this data:

IN 2011-12-22 13:30

OUT 2011-12-22 15:00

the OTHours become 1.00 it should be 1.30

by the way the OT Hours field is decimal type.

Thank you
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@eval_BadCode_Feb 06.2012 — [CODE]
php > $startDate = DateTime::createFromFormat("G:i", '13:35');
php > $endDate = DateTime::createFromFormat("G:i", '17:35');
php > echo $startDate->diff($endDate)->format('%h');
4
[/CODE]

now lets try it against this ...

$IN = 21:35;

$OUT = 05:35;

god help us

[CODE]
php > $startDate = DateTime::createFromFormat("G:i", '21:35');
php > $endDate = DateTime::createFromFormat("G:i", '05:35');
php > echo $startDate->diff($endDate)->format('%h');
16
[/CODE]

As I suspected, providing only hour and minute is a very bad idea. But if you can provide the date part of "Date""Time", then you can get this one easily.

[CODE]
new2net@crosstalk~$ php -a
Interactive shell

php > $startDate = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', '2012-02-05 21:35:00');
php > $endDate = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', '2012-02-06 05:35:00');
php > echo (int) $startDate->diff($endDate,true)->format('%h');
8
[/CODE]

Anyone else see the three problems with this one?

[CODE]
php > if(!$startDate || !$endDate) throw new Exception('The dates were not properly parsed!');
[/CODE]

Now, time-zone is an issue. Maybe DateTime::RFC850 is a better format to use.

The last issue is daylight savings time, which to be honest I can hardly even solve for myself. It completely thrashed a project of mine because my client told me to not worry about daylight savings time, which is like "perfect", but it completely showed up and I had to recode and retest multiple parts of the project which was a huge setback and made the $timeframeForTheProject->add(new DateInterval('P1D')); ? I got compensated for it though.

That is why I mention it ahead of time, [B][COLOR="DarkRed"]you MUST consider your DateTime format before you crank out a bunch of code[/COLOR][/B]. If daylight savings time is going to be an issue then you will need to pick a datetime format that understands what daylight savings time is!!! You can not ignore this if you are automating payments, you can end up losing a lot of money or possibly making a lot of people mad by not paying them enough.

Edit:

Also, why are you storing minutes if you're going to truncate them. Pay them by the minute, not hour. I would be outraged if I got paid for 1 hour even though I worked 1 hour and 30 minutes. A worker might have kids to feed, just saying ?
[CODE]
php > $startDate = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', '2012-02-05 21:55:00');
php > $endDate = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', '2012-02-06 05:35:00');
php > printf('%.2f', $startDate->diff($endDate,true)->format('%h')+$startDate->diff($endDate,true)->format('%i')/60);
7.67
[/CODE]

'Y-m-d H:i:s T +I' looks solid. Or you can just go with epoch time, which is easier to understand.

Cheers
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