timestamp brainteaser (for me at least)

leon77

Im trying to dynamically create a set of "future" timestamps for select times of a day, of selected days (business) and for a certain month. See below... Once i have my timestamps i will then chunk them into my db. If anyone is even slightly insane, and has at least 10 seconds to help me, please do so, even if you just point me in the right direction, or tell me to go to hell.

thanks everyone .:leon:.

Month:
November 2002 <--- editable variable

	Number of Days: 
		30 <--- editable variable

			Business days: 
				1st <--- manual input

					Hours:
						9:00 A.M - 5:00 P.M. 

							Intervals: (5 minute) <--- editable variable
								9:00 - 9:05 <---
								9:05 - 9:10     |
								9:10 - 9:15     |
								9:15 - 9:20     |
								9:25 - 9:30		|
								9:30 - 9:35     |
								9:35 - 9:40		|
						i only need the timestamps in the
						desired increments between 9-5 for my db
				4th
				5th
				6th
				7th
				8th
				12th
				13th
				14th
				15th
				18th
				19th
				20th
				21st
				22nd
				25th
				26th
				27th
				29th


			Weekend Days: <--- manual input 
				2nd       I want the script to ignore these
				3rd
				9th
				10th
				16th
				17th
				23rd
				24th
				30th

			Holidays: <--- manual (ignored)
				11th Veterans Day
				28th Thanksgiving

raymie

Firstly read the manual - specifically the date/time section at http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.datetime.php

The mktime function is one you will need.

Once you construct the timestamp for 9am on one of the days you want you just add 300 to it to advance the timestamp by 5 minutes (5 * 60 seconds).

Hope that this pointer helps.

dwalker

Maybe its just me, but I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish. It looks as though you're trying to build a calendar or scheduling system of sorts, and you want to create "time blocks" to which you can associate other things ...and your data is coming from a database or manually entered??? Do you need a function to print out the text (9-5 in 5 minute increments)?

9:00 - 9:05 <---
9:05 - 9:10 |
9:10 - 9:15 |
9:15 - 9:20 |
9:25 - 9:30 |
9:30 - 9:35 |
9:35 - 9:40 |

Question becomes: how would you store this information? And how will it be used from day to day within other records?

leon77

what i'm trying to dynamically build is a simulation of a stock market month for a certain company.

To run the simulation I'll:

1) Input the month, trading days, weekends, and holidays. the hours will be 9-5

2) Next I'll input the starting price for the stock, some ranges for the stock price to fluctuate "using random()", number of trades per day, and the ending price for the month

3) When i hit the submit button it'll generate the pseudo-stock activity for the entire month and insert it to my db.

After it's in the db i'll pull for my charts & pages.

So basically i want to dynamically build static "future" activity for a month. That's why i need the timestamps generated for me. I need the script to leave out all the timestamps that are not needed...the after hours, holidays, etc.

I'm looking into using a multi-dimensional array, and then writing it all to the db.

Hope that clears things up,

thanks everyone,
.:leon:.