Get time between two DateTime values in hours (and minutes if simple)

[Ian Butterworth]

Trying to get the number of hours between these two dates (ideally "x hours and y minutes"), but can't figure out how to convert the duration variable into hours. The bottom line currently errors

timein = "2015/8/13 10:19:50"

timein2 = "2015/8/14 13:12:34"

time_series[1] = DateTime(timein,"yyyy/mm/dd HH:MM:SS")

time_series[2] = DateTime(timein2,"yyyy/mm/dd HH:MM:SS")

duration = time_series[2]-time_series[1]

Dates.Hour(duration)

[Jeffrey Sarnoff]

Dates.Hour, .. Dates.Millisecond  what to put their parens around DateTime entities only.

Dates.Year. .. Dates.Day are more open-minded, enparenning DateTime or Date entities.

take 'em for a spin like this:

     Dates.Hour(time_series[2]) - Dates.Hour(time_series[1])

Here's to  a Good Evening

[Ian Butterworth]

I took 'em for a spin, but your approach doesn't have legs if the datetimes in time_series come from different days. I.e. Dates.Hour just returns the hour in that day.

I can imagine a long-winded solution where the relevant time units are extracted and differenced, but I was hoping for simpler..

Good evening to you too

[Jeffrey Sarnoff]

well that's accurate -- I was not trying to make them nefarious, I mistook the emphasis.

I will come back with a more fully driveable example in about 15mins.

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 7:41:04 PM UTC-4, Ian Butterworth wrote:

[Jeffrey Sarnoff]

Ian -- 

 "I can imagine a long-winded solution where the relevant time units are extracted and differenced, but I was hoping for simpler.." -- as you should!  

When I saw you use Hour in the first example, I thought you were doing some thing where hour counts were the focus ... (I will prepare a more  fully helpful example).

[Jeffrey Sarnoff]

Good morning, .. and 

I expected that would work .. that the period operators would cooperate differently.

You deserve a more satisying introduction to "basic stuff with time intervals.

   ---  You want time differences to just work so you can do the same.

I agree.

[Kaj Wiik]

You can get Int64 value by duration.value and convert 'by hand' from there. A possibility to convert from Millisecond to DateTime would be nice...
 

[Jeffrey Sarnoff]

On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 5:59:36 AM UTC-4, Kaj Wiik wrote:

You can get Int64 value by duration.value and convert 'by hand' from there. A possibility to convert from Millisecond to DateTime would be nice...
 

There should be

  

     durationAB = DateTimeB - DateTimeA

         rational_hours = convert(Hour, durationAB)
         

[Jeffrey Sarnoff]

What would like two lines of code to do with durations?

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 7:41:04 PM UTC-4, Ian Butterworth wrote:

[Ian Butterworth]

Thanks guys. I ended up using Kaj's approach. Functionality like we discussed would be good if possible.

[Jacob Quinn]

Yeah, it's forthcoming. I left it out originally just to be conservative in code and function, but it's come up enough that we should add it in for TimePeriods. A good "up for grabs" kind of PR if anyone's feeling up for it.

-Jacob