Not sure how to do this with time.

buddysal

Ok.. I'm working with 24 hours here not 12/12.. I've looked through my php books and stuff and can't find anything.. I searched here but didn't find anything, probably because I was looking for the wrong thing, anywho.

I have a start time and end time.. How would I write something to figure out how much time is inbetween the 2 times? The start and stop times are pulled from a mysql database.

For example 09:00 and 13:00 of course thats 4.00 hours but how would I script something to automatically calculate that?

I have no idea where to even start with this lol

any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Buddy

rehfeld

have you looked at the various php functions? theres lots of them.

some in particular:

strtotime()
mktime()

read the user comments too

buddysal

Ok, thanks.. I will look at them.

buddysal

I looked at them, but I don't know how they would help me in this situation. I don't know how or what the guy used to insert the time into the database.. All I know is I'm using these two variables to call the 2 times from mysql.

$GetClosedPFP_starttime
$GetClosedPFP_Stoptime

Both return time in the format in my first post 19:00 or 23:00 ect.. Is there a way that I can put these 2 variables into a time format like mktime() or something and it change the time to the format needed to calculate the time between? Or is that impossible?

Also, There was no user comments on the two things you told me to read the manual on..

Thanks,
Buddy

Roger_Ramjet

To get the time into am/pm notation you should use strftime . Read the user notes here as ther are plenty of things to consider, especially if it is a winders box.

buddysal

Originally posted by Roger Ramjet
To get the time into am/pm notation you should use strftime . Read the user notes here as ther are plenty of things to consider, especially if it is a winders box.

Ok, but I'm not trying to change to am/pm.. Im trying to figure out how to calculate the amount of time between the start time and stop time.

I'm looking at the link you gave me though, thanks.

Roger_Ramjet

Sorry, saw the bit about 24 not 12/12 and thought that was your problem.

You can, and should, use the mysql date and time functions to do this for you. Guessing at your table layout, and assuming that you are using TIME or DATETIME columns to store the times


$sql = "SELECT id, TIMEDIFF(start, end) as t FROM table";

This will work with both time and datetime column types. It will return hrs:mins:secs and you can either enclose it in the sql EXTRACT function to extract just the part you need, or do it in php, up to you.

PS both columns MUST be the same data type, and it is only from mysql ver 4.1.1 up, sorry.

buddysal

The two fields that hes using for start and stop time is TEXT. If I was to change the type to TIME would that mess up the way he has the time being recorded? Or better yet.. would I have to figure out where he is inserting the time and change something? Sorry I have never really used time just to record a time something was sent or done.. This is completely new to me.

I would imagine he is inserting it using time() and then just inserting it into a TEXT field.

All of this was written and it works to do everything manually but these guys want me to go in and make it automated.. I have everything worked out but this.

Thanks,
Buddy

Roger_Ramjet

No. If he is inserting a correctly delimited time string then mysql will type it dynamically: it is how I up-load data from our Access dbs onto mysql, convert the access date (dd/mm/yyyy) into a string (yyyy-mm-dd) and in it goes.

TAKE A BACKUP AND TEST IT FIRST THOUGH. If someone else wrote it using a text field for time 😕 then there's no telling what other weird and wonderfull things are going on. :bemused:

My inclination would be to add the time fields to the table, copy the strings across and work on that first.

buddysal

Alright, I will try that lol.

Yea the guy that came to me said this guy just up and wrote it from alot of books or something...

The time is actually being drawn from software and then inserted into the mysql database.. I will ask them if it's ok that I may have to change some stuff on the current script and then work from there..

I was hoping that this could be as easy as writting one file and just using the current mysql database and then be done with it, But given the way it's written I think I may have some problems with it working that easily.

Thanks for all of your help.

If I need anything else I'll definately ask.

Thanks,
Buddy