Calculate duration of two points in time ISO 8601

Question

I'm having the following data:

"startAt": "PT0S",
"endAt": "PT21M12.667S"

startAt defines the start of a video and endAt the end of the video. How can I calculate the time between these points? I guess its ISO 8601 and I am using Java, but the library I tried (Joda) doens't work with the endAt paramter.

Convert them to timestamps and subtract? (timestamp like in "milliseconds since 1970-01-01 00:00 UTC") — Fildor, Sep 17 '13 at 12:55
@Fildor And to convert them to milliseconds? That's probably the problem — Cruncher, Sep 17 '13 at 12:57

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 17 '13 at 13:01

4

These are ISO-8601 period values (not points in time) - and Joda Time handles them fine:

import org.joda.time.*;
import org.joda.time.format.*;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String startText = "PT0S";
        String endText = "PT21M12.667S";

        PeriodFormatter format = ISOPeriodFormat.standard();
        Period start = format.parsePeriod(startText);
        Period end = format.parsePeriod(endText);

        Duration duration = end.minus(start).toStandardDuration();
        System.out.println(duration); // PT1272.667S
        System.out.println(duration.getMillis()); // 1272667
    }
}

answered Sep 17 '13 at 13:01

Jon Skeet

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Do you know everything? Or are you just a research god? – Cruncher Sep 17 '13 at 13:08
@Cruncher: Well date and time APIs are very close to my heart, so it didn't take long to whip up the sample code... – Jon Skeet Sep 17 '13 at 13:17
Thank you very much Sir! I just didn't understand the point char between the 12 and the 667 but this works fine! Keep up the great work :) – Dominik Sep 17 '13 at 17:07

Arvind Kumar Avinash · Answer 2 · 2021-02-19T07:52:18.890

Using Java-8 standard library

java.time.Duration is modelled on ISO-8601 standards and was introduced as part of JSR-310 implementation.

Demo:

import java.time.Duration;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String startAt = "PT0S";
        String endAt = "PT21M12.667S";
        Duration start = Duration.parse(startAt);
        Duration end = Duration.parse(endAt);
        long millis = end.minus(start).toMillis();
        System.out.println(millis);
    }
}

Output:

Learn more about the modern date-time API from Trail: Date Time.

For any reason, if you have to stick to Java 6 or Java 7, you can use ThreeTen-Backport which backports most of the java.time functionality to Java 6 & 7.
If you are working for an Android project and your Android API level is still not compliant with Java-8, check Java 8+ APIs available through desugaring and How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project.

Calculate duration of two points in time ISO 8601

2 Answers2

Using Java-8 standard library