calculate time interval in minutes between two timestamps python

Question

I have two timestamps:

time1= "2020-01-25T01:47:35.431Z"
time2="2020-01-25T02:02:57.500Z"

I used the following function to calculate the time interval between the two and return it in minute and round to two decimals.

def app_run2_min_diff(time1,time2):
    time1= str(time1)
    time1datetime.strptime(time1,'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ')
    time2= str(time2)
    time2=datetime.strptime(time2,'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ')
    sec1=time1.strftime('%S')
    sec2=time2.strftime('%S')
    min_dif=round((float(sec2)-float(sec1)/60),2)
    return min_dif

My logic is that to deduct the second difference first and then convert to minute. The min_dff I got is 34.42 , but the correct answer is 15.35. What's wrong with my logic above?

`min_dif=round(((float(sec2)-float(sec1))/60) ,2)` `float(sec1)/60` performs first in your case — Rustam Garayev, Feb 08 '21 at 19:25
@RustemQarayev thanks I fixed that but it's still not getting the correct answer — hokoio, Feb 08 '21 at 19:38
Because you are just subtracting seconds, not the actual time, check this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10663720/how-to-convert-a-time-string-to-seconds — Rustam Garayev, Feb 08 '21 at 19:45

Rustam Garayev · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-08T20:34:22.237

The easier way to do would be to convert datetime.strptime object to datetime.timedelta by simply subtracting two dates. Then applying simple arithmetic will give you the reuslt.

from datetime import datetime

time1= "2020-01-25T01:47:35.431Z"
time2="2020-01-25T02:02:57.500Z"


def to_minutes(td):
    return td.days*1440 + td.seconds/60


def app_run2_min_diff(time1,time2):
    time1 = datetime.strptime(time1,'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ')
    time2 = datetime.strptime(time2,'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ')

    time_diff = time2 - time1
    
    min_dif = round(to_minutes(time_diff), 2)
    return min_dif

The result of app_run2_min_diff(time1, time2) will be:

15.37

calculate time interval in minutes between two timestamps python

1 Answers1