How do I convert datetime.timedelta to minutes, ho

Question

I get a start_date like this:

from django.utils.timezone import utc
import datetime

start_date = datetime.datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc)
end_date = datetime.datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc)
duration = end_date - start_date

I get output like this:

datetime.timedelta(0, 5, 41038)

How do I convert this into normal time like the following?

10 minutes, 1 hour like this

Answer 1

There's no built-in formatter for timedelta objects, but it's pretty easy to do it yourself:

days, seconds = duration.days, duration.seconds
hours = days * 24 + seconds // 3600
minutes = (seconds % 3600) // 60
seconds = seconds % 60

Or, equivalently, if you're in Python 2.7+ or 3.2+:

seconds = duration.total_seconds()
hours = seconds // 3600
minutes = (seconds % 3600) // 60
seconds = seconds % 60

Now you can print it however you want:

'{} minutes, {} hours'.format(minutes, hours)

For example:

def convert_timedelta(duration):
    days, seconds = duration.days, duration.seconds
    hours = days * 24 + seconds // 3600
    minutes = (seconds % 3600) // 60
    seconds = (seconds % 60)
    return hours, minutes, seconds
td = datetime.timedelta(2, 7743, 12345)
hours, minutes, seconds = convert_timedelta(td)
print '{} minutes, {} hours'.format(minutes, hours)

This will print:

9 minutes, 50 hours

If you want to get "10 minutes, 1 hour" instead of "10 minutes, 1 hours", you need to do that manually too:

print '{} minute{}, {} hour{}'.format(minutes, 's' if minutes != 1 else '',
                                      hours, 's' if minutes != 1 else '')

Or you may want to write an english_plural function to do the 's' bits for you, instead of repeating yourself.

From your comments, it sounds like you actually want to keep the days separate. That's even easier:

def convert_timedelta(duration):
    days, seconds = duration.days, duration.seconds
    hours = seconds // 3600
    minutes = (seconds % 3600) // 60
    seconds = (seconds % 60)
    return days, hours, minutes, seconds

If you want to convert this to a single value to store in a database, then convert that single value back to format it, do this:

def dhms_to_seconds(days, hours, minutes, seconds):
    return (((days * 24) + hours) * 60 + minutes) * 60 + seconds

def seconds_to_dhms(seconds):
    days = seconds // (3600 * 24)
    hours = (seconds // 3600) % 24
    minutes = (seconds // 60) % 60
    seconds = seconds % 60
    return days, hours, minutes, seconds

So, putting it together:

def store_timedelta_in_database(thingy, duration):
    seconds = dhms_to_seconds(*convert_timedelta(duration))
    db.execute('INSERT INTO foo (thingy, duration) VALUES (?, ?)',
               thingy, seconds)
    db.commit()

def print_timedelta_from_database(thingy):
    cur = db.execute('SELECT duration FROM foo WHERE thingy = ?', thingy)
    seconds = int(cur.fetchone()[0])
    days, hours, minutes, seconds = seconds_to_dhms(seconds)
    print '{} took {} minutes, {} hours, {} days'.format(thingy, minutes, hours, days)

Answer 2

Do you want to print the date in that format? This is the Python documentation: http://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#strftime-strptime-behavior

>>> a = datetime.datetime(2013, 1, 7, 10, 31, 34, 243366)
>>> print a.strftime('%Y %d %B, %M:%S%p')
>>> 2013 07 January, 31:34AM

For the timedelta:

>>> a =  datetime.timedelta(0,5,41038)
>>> print '%s seconds, %s microseconds' % (a.seconds, a.microseconds)

But please notice, you should make sure it has the related value. For the above cases, it doesn't have the hours and minute values, and you should calculate from the seconds.

Answer 3

datetime.timedelta(hours=1, minutes=10)
#python 2.7