How to calculate the time interval between two time strings

Structure that represent time difference in Python is called timedelta. If you have start_time and end_time as datetime types you can calculate the difference using - operator like:

diff = end_time - start_time

you should do this before converting to particualr string format (eg. before start_time.strftime(…)). In case you have already string representation you need to convert it back to time/datetime by using strptime method.

Both time and datetime have a date component.

Normally if you are just dealing with the time part you’d supply a default date. If you are just interested in the difference and know that both times are on the same day then construct a datetime for each with the day set to today and subtract the start from the stop time to get the interval (timedelta).

Take a look at the datetime module and the timedelta objects. You should end up constructing a datetime object for the start and stop times, and when you subtract them, you get a timedelta.

This site says to try:

import datetime as dt
start="09:35:23"
end="10:23:00"
start_dt = dt.datetime.strptime(start, '%H:%M:%S')
end_dt = dt.datetime.strptime(end, '%H:%M:%S')
diff = (end_dt - start_dt) 
diff.seconds/60 

This forum uses time.mktime()

Try this — it’s efficient for timing short-term events. If something takes more than an hour, then the final display probably will want some friendly formatting.

import time
start = time.time()

time.sleep(10)  # or do something more productive

done = time.time()
elapsed = done - start
print(elapsed)

The time difference is returned as the number of elapsed seconds.

Here’s a solution that supports finding the difference even if the end time is less than the start time (over midnight interval) such as 23:55:00-00:25:00 (a half an hour duration):

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime, time as datetime_time, timedelta

def time_diff(start, end):
    if isinstance(start, datetime_time): # convert to datetime
        assert isinstance(end, datetime_time)
        start, end = [datetime.combine(datetime.min, t) for t in [start, end]]
    if start <= end: # e.g., 10:33:26-11:15:49
        return end - start
    else: # end < start e.g., 23:55:00-00:25:00
        end += timedelta(1) # +day
        assert end > start
        return end - start

for time_range in ['10:33:26-11:15:49', '23:55:00-00:25:00']:
    s, e = [datetime.strptime(t, '%H:%M:%S') for t in time_range.split('-')]
    print(time_diff(s, e))
    assert time_diff(s, e) == time_diff(s.time(), e.time())

Output

0:42:23
0:30:00

time_diff() returns a timedelta object that you can pass (as a part of the sequence) to a mean() function directly e.g.:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import timedelta

def mean(data, start=timedelta(0)):
    """Find arithmetic average."""
    return sum(data, start) / len(data)

data = [timedelta(minutes=42, seconds=23), # 0:42:23
        timedelta(minutes=30)] # 0:30:00
print(repr(mean(data)))
# -> datetime.timedelta(0, 2171, 500000) # days, seconds, microseconds

The mean() result is also timedelta() object that you can convert to seconds (td.total_seconds() method (since Python 2.7)), hours (td / timedelta(hours=1) (Python 3)), etc.

I like how this guy does it — https://amalgjose.com/2015/02/19/python-code-for-calculating-the-difference-between-two-time-stamps.
Not sure if it has some cons.

But looks neat for me 🙂

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

t_a = datetime.now()
t_b = datetime.now()

def diff(t_a, t_b):
    t_diff = relativedelta(t_b, t_a)  # later/end time comes first!
    return '{h}h {m}m {s}s'.format(h=t_diff.hours, m=t_diff.minutes, s=t_diff.seconds)

Regarding to the question you still need to use datetime.strptime() as others said earlier.

Try this

import datetime
import time
start_time = datetime.datetime.now().time().strftime('%H:%M:%S')
time.sleep(5)
end_time = datetime.datetime.now().time().strftime('%H:%M:%S')
total_time=(datetime.datetime.strptime(end_time,'%H:%M:%S') - datetime.datetime.strptime(start_time,'%H:%M:%S'))
print total_time

OUTPUT :

0:00:05

Concise if you are just interested in the time elapsed that is under 24 hours. You can format the output as needed in the return statement :

import datetime
def elapsed_interval(start,end):
    elapsed = end - start
    min,secs=divmod(elapsed.days * 86400 + elapsed.seconds, 60)
    hour, minutes = divmod(min, 60)
    return '%.2d:%.2d:%.2d' % (hour,minutes,secs)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    time_start=datetime.datetime.now()
    """ do your process """
    time_end=datetime.datetime.now()
    total_time=elapsed_interval(time_start,time_end)

import datetime as dt
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

start = "09:35:23"
end = "10:23:00"
start_dt = dt.datetime.strptime(start, "%H:%M:%S")
end_dt = dt.datetime.strptime(end, "%H:%M:%S")
timedelta_obj = relativedelta(start_dt, end_dt)
print(
    timedelta_obj.years,
    timedelta_obj.months,
    timedelta_obj.days,
    timedelta_obj.hours,
    timedelta_obj.minutes,
    timedelta_obj.seconds,
)

result:
0 0 0 0 -47 -37

    import datetime
    
    day = int(input("day[1,2,3,..31]: "))
    month = int(input("Month[1,2,3,...12]: "))
    year = int(input("year[0~2020]: "))
    start_date = datetime.date(year, month, day)
    
    day = int(input("day[1,2,3,..31]: "))
    month = int(input("Month[1,2,3,...12]: "))
    year = int(input("year[0~2020]: "))
    end_date = datetime.date(year, month, day)
    
    time_difference = end_date - start_date
    age = time_difference.days
    print("Total days: " + str(age))

you can use pendulum:

import pendulum

t1 = pendulum.parse("10:33:26")
t2 = pendulum.parse("10:43:36")

period = t2 - t1

print(period.seconds)

would output:

610

Usually, you have more than one case to deal with and perhaps have it in a pd.DataFrame(data) format. Then:

import pandas as pd

df['duration'] = pd.to_datetime(df['stop time']) - pd.to_datetime(df['start time'])

gives you the time difference without any manual conversion.

Taken from Convert DataFrame column type from string to datetime.

If you are lazy and do not mind the overhead of pandas, then you could do this even for just one entry.

Here is the code if the string contains days also [-1 day 32:43:02]:

print(
    (int(time.replace('-', '').split(' ')[0]) * 24) * 60 
    + (int(time.split(' ')[-1].split(':')[0]) * 60)
    + int(time.split(' ')[-1].split(':')[1])
)