How to calculate the time interval between two time strings

Question

I have two times, a start and a stop time, in the format of 10:33:26 (HH:MM:SS). I need the difference between the two times. I\'ve been looking through documentation for

Answer 1

Here's a solution that supports finding the difference even if the end time is less than the start time (over midnight interval) such as 23:55:00-00:25:00 (a half an hour duration):

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime, time as datetime_time, timedelta

def time_diff(start, end):
    if isinstance(start, datetime_time): # convert to datetime
        assert isinstance(end, datetime_time)
        start, end = [datetime.combine(datetime.min, t) for t in [start, end]]
    if start <= end: # e.g., 10:33:26-11:15:49
        return end - start
    else: # end < start e.g., 23:55:00-00:25:00
        end += timedelta(1) # +day
        assert end > start
        return end - start

for time_range in ['10:33:26-11:15:49', '23:55:00-00:25:00']:
    s, e = [datetime.strptime(t, '%H:%M:%S') for t in time_range.split('-')]
    print(time_diff(s, e))
    assert time_diff(s, e) == time_diff(s.time(), e.time())

Output

0:42:23
0:30:00

time_diff() returns a timedelta object that you can pass (as a part of the sequence) to a mean() function directly e.g.:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import timedelta

def mean(data, start=timedelta(0)):
    """Find arithmetic average."""
    return sum(data, start) / len(data)

data = [timedelta(minutes=42, seconds=23), # 0:42:23
        timedelta(minutes=30)] # 0:30:00
print(repr(mean(data)))
# -> datetime.timedelta(0, 2171, 500000) # days, seconds, microseconds

The mean() result is also timedelta() object that you can convert to seconds (td.total_seconds() method (since Python 2.7)), hours (td / timedelta(hours=1) (Python 3)), etc.