Hours between to times

[Rod]

Hi,

I am new to PHP and mySQL. I am having trouble with something that I thought would be easy but is not working out that way.

I have 2 time fields in mySQL table, a start time and a finish time.
All I want to do is work out the number of hours and minutes between the 2 times.

I have it working (eventually) by using
SEC_TO_TIME(TIME_TO_SEC("finish") - TIME_TO_SEC("start"))
in my select query, but I was wondering how to do it in PHP.

Thanks,
Rod

[twilson]

Rod,

Please give an example of the time data. I can help ya then. 🙂

Peace,
Tom

[Rod]

Hi,

I have it worked out, though it may not be the best way.

function FormatHours($row)
{
$StartShift = strtotime($row["StartShift"]);
$FinishShift = strtotime($row["FinishShift"]);
$Diff = $FinishShift - $StartShift;
return str_pad(floor($Diff / 3600),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT).":".str_pad(($Diff % 3600 / 60),2,"0",STR_PAD_RIGHT);
}

This gives me a result in hh:mm format.
eg. If the shift started at 09:30 and finished at 17:00 then this would return 07:30, the number of hours worked.
If anyone has any comments or a better way, please let me know.

Thanks,
Rod

[cahva]

Why do you want to do the formatting in PHP if you got it to work in mysql with a much lesser hasle?

So if you want to format it straight in your SELECT query, you would do it like this:
SELECT TIME_FORMAT( SEC_TO_TIME( TIME_TO_SEC( finish ) - TIME_TO_SEC( start ) ) , '%H:%i' ) as diff FROM table

Oh well, its a matter of taste.. I like the mysql-way much better and easier...