How do I get the number of seconds between two DateTimes in Ruby on Rails

Question

I\'ve got code that does time tracking for employees. It creates a counter to show the employee how long they have been clocked in for.

This is the current code:

Answer 1

Subtracting two DateTimes returns the elapsed time in days, so you could just do:

elapsed_seconds = ((end_time - start_time) * 24 * 60 * 60).to_i

Answer 2

I am using ruby-2.1.4 and for me the following worked

Time.now - Time.new(2014,11,05,17,30,0)

gave me the time difference in seconds

reference: ruby doc

Answer 3

there's a method made for that:

Time.now.minus_with_coercion(10.seconds.ago)

equals 10.

Source: http://apidock.com/rails/Time/minus_with_coercion

Hope I helped.

Answer 4

Define a Ruby function like this,

def time_diff(start_time, end_time)
  seconds_diff = (start_time - end_time).to_i.abs

  days = seconds_diff / 86400 
  seconds_diff -= days * 86400

  hours = seconds_diff / 3600  
  seconds_diff -= hours * 3600

  minutes = seconds_diff / 60
  seconds_diff -= minutes * 60

  seconds = seconds_diff

  "#{days} Days #{hours} Hrs #{minutes} Min #{seconds} Sec"
 end

And Call this function,

time_diff(Time.now, Time.now-4.days-2.hours-1.minutes-53.seconds)

Answer 5

Others incorrectly rely on fractions or helper functions. It's much simpler than that. DateTime itself is integer underneath. Here's the Ruby way:

stop.to_i - start.to_i

Example:

start = Time.now
 => 2016-06-21 14:55:36 -0700
stop = start + 5.seconds
 => 2016-06-21 14:55:41 -0700
stop.to_i - start.to_i
 => 5

Answer 6

why not use the built in "sec" . Here is an example :

t1 = Time.now.sec 

elapsed_t = Time.now.sec - t1

puts "it took me :  #{elapsed_t} seconds to do something that is useful \n"