Difference in minutes from two time fields in MySQL

Question

I set up my MySQL database with the field \'time\'

It is not HH:MM in the traditional sense, it is the time an event occurred, so an event with the value of 5:45 occ

Answer 1

Just use

TIMEDIFF(fromtime, totime):

SELECT TIMEDIFF("12:25", "5:45");

If you need a decimal, use TIME_TO_SEC()/3600 (it assumes you passed it seconds, but the format you're storing the times in is vague and SQL probably will interpret them as HH:MM - you can fix this with CONCAT("00:",MinuteSecondField) maybe?) - then you can use TIME_TO_SEC()/60, which is more correct)