How can I produce a human readable difference when subtracting two UNIX timestamps using Python?

Question

This question is similar to this question about subtracting dates with Python, but not identical. I\'m not dealing with strings, I have to figure out the difference between

Answer 1

Old question, but I personally like this approach most:

import datetime
import math

def human_time(*args, **kwargs):
    secs  = float(datetime.timedelta(*args, **kwargs).total_seconds())
    units = [("day", 86400), ("hour", 3600), ("minute", 60), ("second", 1)]
    parts = []
    for unit, mul in units:
        if secs / mul >= 1 or mul == 1:
            if mul > 1:
                n = int(math.floor(secs / mul))
                secs -= n * mul
            else:
                n = secs if secs != int(secs) else int(secs)
            parts.append("%s %s%s" % (n, unit, "" if n == 1 else "s"))
    return ", ".join(parts)

human_time(seconds=3721)
# -> "1 hour, 2 minutes, 1 second"

If you want to separate the seconds part with an "and" do:

"%s and %s" % tuple(human_time(seconds=3721).rsplit(", ", 1))
# -> "1 hour, 2 minutes and 1 second"