Best way to store working hours and query it efficiently

Question

I'm planning to store working hours for shops. I'm wondering what might be the best modeling for the working hours field so that I can get a list of open/closed shops at the current moment in very efficient way.

Answer 1

To store normal operation hours, you would need to store a number of records containing:

• Shop - INTEGER
• DayOfWeek - INTEGER (0-6)
• OpenTime - TIME
• CloseTime - TIME

I assume for example that each shop has reduced hours during national holidays, or has plant shutdowns, so you would also need to store some override records:

• Shop - INTEGER
• OverrideStartDate - DATE
• OverrideEndDate - DATE
• DayOfWeek - INTEGER (0-6)
• AltOpenTime - TIME
• AltCloseTime - TIME
• Closed - INTEGER (0, 1)

To find open shops is trivial, but you also need to check if there are override hours:

SELECT Shop
FROM OverrideHours
WHERE OverrideStartDate <= NOW()
AND OverrideEndDate >= NOW()
AND DayOfWeek = WEEKDAY(NOW())

If there are any record returned, those shops have alternate hours or are closed.

There may be some nice SQL-fu you can do here, but this gives you the basics.

EDIT

I haven't tested this, but this should get you close:

SELECT Normal.Shop
FROM Normal
LEFT JOIN Override
ON Normal.Shop = Override.Shop
AND Normal.DayOfWeek = Override.DayOfWeek
AND NOW() BETWEEN Override.OverrideStartDate AND Override.OverrideEndDate
WHERE Normal.DayOfWeek = WEEKDAY(NOW())
AND ((Override.Shop IS NULL AND TIME(NOW()) BETWEEN Normal.OpenTime AND Normal.CloseTime)
 OR  (Override.Shop IS NOT NULL AND Override.Closed <> 1 AND TIME(NOW()) BETWEEN Override.AltOpenTime AND Override.AltCloseTime))

EDIT

As for efficiency, it is efficient in the sense that you only have to make one call to MySQL which is often a bottleneck if it is across a network. You'll have to test and see whether this performs to your specifications. If not, you may be to play with some indices.

EDIT

Testing. Not complete testing, but some.

mysql> select * from Normal;
+------+-----------+----------+-----------+
| Shop | DayOfWeek | OpenTime | CloseTime |
+------+-----------+----------+-----------+
|    1 |         1 | 09:00:00 | 17:00:00  | 
|    1 |         5 | 09:00:00 | 16:00:00  | 
|    2 |         1 | 09:00:00 | 17:00:00  | 
|    2 |         5 | 09:00:00 | 17:00:00  | 
+------+-----------+----------+-----------+
4 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> select * from Override;
+------+-------------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------+--------------+--------+
| Shop | OverrideStartDate | OverrideEndDate | DayOfWeek | AltOpenTime | AltCloseTime | Closed |
+------+-------------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------+--------------+--------+
|    2 | 2010-12-01        | 2010-12-31      |         1 | 09:00:00    | 18:00:00     |      0 | 
|    2 | 2010-12-01        | 2010-12-31      |         5 | 09:00:00    | 18:00:00     |      0 | 
|    1 | 2010-12-01        | 2010-12-31      |         1 | 09:00:00    | 17:00:00     |      1 | 
+------+-------------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------+--------------+--------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SET @whenever = TIMESTAMP('2010-11-23 16:05');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT WEEKDAY(@whenever);
+--------------------+
| WEEKDAY(@whenever) |
+--------------------+
|                  1 | 
+--------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT Normal.Shop FROM Normal LEFT JOIN Override ON Normal.Shop = Override.Shop AND Normal.DayOfWeek = Override.DayOfWeek AND @whenever BETWEEN Override.OverrideStartDate AND Override.OverrideEndDate WHERE Normal.DayOfWeek = WEEKDAY(@whenever) AND ((Override.Shop IS NULL AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Normal.OpenTime AND Normal.CloseTime)  OR  (Override.Shop IS NOT NULL AND Override.Closed <> 1 AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Override.AltOpenTime AND Override.AltCloseTime));
+------+
| Shop |
+------+
|    1 | 
|    2 | 
+------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SET @whenever = TIMESTAMP('2010-11-23 17:05');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT Normal.Shop FROM Normal LEFT JOIN Override ON Normal.Shop = Override.Shop AND Normal.DayOfWeek = Override.DayOfWeek AND @whenever BETWEEN Override.OverrideStartDate AND Override.OverrideEndDate WHERE Normal.DayOfWeek = WEEKDAY(@whenever) AND ((Override.Shop IS NULL AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Normal.OpenTime AND Normal.CloseTime)  OR  (Override.Shop IS NOT NULL AND Override.Closed <> 1 AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Override.AltOpenTime AND Override.AltCloseTime));
Empty set (0.01 sec)

mysql> SET @whenever = TIMESTAMP('2010-12-25 16:05');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT Normal.Shop FROM Normal LEFT JOIN Override ON Normal.Shop = Override.Shop AND Normal.DayOfWeek = Override.DayOfWeek AND @whenever BETWEEN Override.OverrideStartDate AND Override.OverrideEndDate WHERE Normal.DayOfWeek = WEEKDAY(@whenever) AND ((Override.Shop IS NULL AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Normal.OpenTime AND Normal.CloseTime)  OR  (Override.Shop IS NOT NULL AND Override.Closed <> 1 AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Override.AltOpenTime AND Override.AltCloseTime));
+------+
| Shop |
+------+
|    2 | 
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SET @whenever = TIMESTAMP('2010-11-23 17:05');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT WEEKDAY(@whenever);
+--------------------+
| WEEKDAY(@whenever) |
+--------------------+
|                  1 | 
+--------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT Normal.Shop FROM Normal LEFT JOIN Override ON Normal.Shop = Override.Shop AND Normal.DayOfWeek = Override.DayOfWeek AND @whenever BETWEEN Override.OverrideStartDate AND Override.OverrideEndDate WHERE Normal.DayOfWeek = WEEKDAY(@whenever) AND ((Override.Shop IS NULL AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Normal.OpenTime AND Normal.CloseTime)  OR  (Override.Shop IS NOT NULL AND Override.Closed <> 1 AND TIME(@whenever) BETWEEN Override.AltOpenTime AND Override.AltCloseTime));
Empty set (0.00 sec)

Answer 2

Let's consider all opening hours are the same every week. So what about following table:

• shop_id - INTEGER (or any unique identifier of the shop)
• week_day - INTEGER (0=Monday - 6=Sunday)
• opens_at - TIME (use your local timezone)
• closes_at - TIME (use your local timezone)

Make a table for shops identified by shop_id and then insert the opening hours, i.e:

• 1, 0, 8:00, 17:00
• ...
• 1, 5, 8:00, 12:00
• 2, 0, 7:30, 12:30
• 2, 0, 13:30, 17:30
• 2, 1, 7:30, 12:30
• 2, 1, 13:30, 17:30
• ...

and then SELECT:

SELECT shop_id
FROM opening_hours
WHERE WEEKDAY(NOW()) = week_day
AND TIME(NOW()) BETWEEN opens_at AND closes_at