Time Crisis [Nothing to do with the game]

miles_rich

Ok i am working on a projectand i am havng really big problems with working with time. i am working on a Time hire project. Let me explain, a person hires out a peice of equipment say a computer and it is then logged on a computer how long they want it for.

so to go into the calculation:

time hired from : 12:00
time due back : 14:00

AT the moment i have it so you have 2 drop down boxes with 00:00 at the start and then stop at 24:00 the same day which represents one day this is for time that it goes out. i then have the same for when it is due back.

This works fine if the it is due back the same day before 24:00 hours so say i lent it out at 12:00 and got it back at 14:00 hours it would work out that it was lent out for 2 hours which then chagres the correct amount. but the problems arise when i enter values like:

time hired from : 23:00
time due back : 07:00 ( the next day )

it then out puts a minus value, which then works out that i have to pay them 🙁 this is not good.

does anyone have any ideas how to solve my problem? because i am very stuck for ideas.

KoshNaranek

to make a "-" a "+" there is an old formula from Algebra...

if (hiretime<0) {hiretime=hiretime*(-1)}

miles_rich

what about if it is 2 days later?

michael

Date chooser. =)

All I can reccommend you to do is use epic dates. =)

echo date("YmdHis");

This is the date format you should use in your db.

It makes comparison a snap.

Loan: 20021028080000
Return: 20021028120000 // 4h

? Return - Loan = 40000 // 4h

Thus: YYYYMMDDHHMMSS

I am not sure you would wish to adapt to milli or microseconds, or if you'll use the seconds, but you could implement per second billing, which is phat as all good and holy heck. =)

I was using a RFC822 system, but I favor this Epic date/timestamp to that. This is far superior. [IMO]

In short, you need either a text box, or a date chooser.

See incl photo.

miles_rich

do you know of one that is already made that uses the time and date picker??

so first you pick a date and then you pick a time?

KoshNaranek

😃 your question was "how do i get -5 to +5" 😉

Hmmm... there are some mktime-functions in the php-manual

The easiest way would be to generate 2 Unix-Timestamps (start - end) and substract them... the difference has to been reformated to something you can work with...

The result should be "01:05:30" -> 1 Day 5 hours 30 minutes...

look at the manual "strtotime()"

miles_rich

so how would i convert a date and time say 12/11/2002 11:30am into a unix timestamp and back again??

KoshNaranek

look at the manual "strtotime()"

iam using the german version... so copy and paste would not be very helpfull 😃

Try this

klick here

michael

Originally posted by miles_rich
do you know of one that is already made that uses the time and date picker??

so first you pick a date and then you pick a time?

Exactly. That's the only way to account for overnight loans.

I do not know if there are premade ones. Asp has them. I'm sure there's a javascript one you could use.

But this is your department. I'm just trying to give you idea.

I believe using unix timestamps would be a poor idea. I think Epic dates is the way to go.

miles_rich

what is an epic date??

KoshNaranek

I believe using unix timestamps would be a poor idea. I think Epic dates is the way to go.

i'ts poor but true php 😃 and it is the simple way 😉

I'm just trying to give a idea, too 🙂

Calculation Dates and Times is always a pain in the a** 🆒 have you ever done this with M$ Excel? I'ts a easy way, to get totally nuts :p

miles_rich

so what is the difference between epic and unix time stamps??

why is unix a poor way to do it??

KoshNaranek

OK... here is a "poor" solution, i've written and tested in a few Minutes:

<?php

$startdate="03/18/2002 13:30";

$enddate="03/22/2002 11:15";

$newstart=strtotime($startdate);
$newend=strtotime($enddate);

$calc=$newend-$newstart;

echo "Strings: ".$startdate." -> ".$enddate."<br>";
echo "Unix-Timestamps: ".$newend." - ".$newstart." = ".$calc."<br>";

echo "date - ". date('d   H:i', $calc)."<br>";

$diff=getdate($calc);
$days = $diff['mday'];
$days=$days-1;
$hours= $diff['hours'];
$hours=$hours-1;
$mins = $diff['minutes'];

echo $days." days, ".$hours." hours, ".$mins." minutes.";

?>

Output is:

Strings: 03/18/2002 13:30 - 03/22/2002 11:15 = ???
Unix-Timestamps: 1016792100 - 1016454600 = 337500
date - 04 22:45
3 days, 21 hours, 45 minutes.

Now you just have to do "days -1" (because it's not a full day) "hours -1" to correct the "full hours"

Try out a little ... it's a "quick'n'dirty"-one 😃

miles_rich

what other ways are there of doing that??
if that is a realy quick and dirty way of doing it which is the slow and good way to do it??

please help