Time Calculation

[BRIAN GRAY]

Good Morning,

I could swear I've read my question here once before, but damned if I can find it.

I've created a table to keep track of the time I spend on my application. I do most of my work at night when I get off of work. So generally I start before 12:00 AM and work past 12:00 AM. This is where my question lies. I want one of my fields,"Totaltime", to calculate the duration between "INTIME" and "OUTTIME".

I've tried :
TOTIME(TOSECONDS(OUTTIME)-TOSECONDS(INTIME),1,2 )

This obviously will not work alone due to the times being to different days. I'm sure someone else has run into this. Enlighten me.

Brian

[Steve Andrews]

RE: Time Calculation

Brian,

From your posting, I presume that INTIME and OUTTIME are character strings in the format "hh:mm". Regardless, one solution is to make them type T instead. Type T variables contain the date as well as the time to handle such situations as yours. Moreover, to log in or out merely requires that you assign a variable the value NOW() which returns type T.

Suppose we have:
?intime
= 01/04/2005 10:06:22 29 pm
?outtime
= 01/05/2005 03:06:22 29 am

Two ways to view time elapsed are:
?(outtime-intime)/60 'minutes elapsed
= 300.000000
and
?totime(outtime-intime,1,0) '(hh:mm)
= "5:00"

My 2 minutes,
Steve

[BRIAN GRAY]

RE: Time Calculation

Thanks Steve,

How would you handle the situation if "INDATE" ,"INTIME" ,"OUTDATE","OUTTIME" were all fields not variables. I'm trying to define the calculation in field rules.

Thanks Brian

[Wanda Tucker]

RE: Time Calculation

Hi Brian,
Couldn't you have another field to create the field rule calculation in? Then, when you enter the OUTTIME, your total time would calculate. If you don't want to enter a new record for each time you need to track your time, just edit the one existing record and recalc field rules.

I've not worked with time fields, but it seems like this would work.

Wanda

[Steve Andrews]

RE: Time Calculation

Brian,

My first inclination was to make these fields type T but after investigating I see that it doesn't seem possible. One solution still appears to be to create type T variables which make use of your fields. This, of course, requires parsing of the various elements of your field values.

Before proceding, we must first know the types for your fields. Are INDATE and OUTDATE type D? Are INTIME and OUTTIME type C (with an "hh:mm am" format)? I will assume so for the moment.

indate = {01/04/05}
intime = "10:50 pm"
outdate = {01/05/05}
outtime = "02:30 am"

starttime=scantime(dtoc(indate)+" "+intime,"MM/dd/yyyy 0h:0m am")
?starttime
= 01/04/2005 10:50:00 00 pm

endtime=scantime(dtoc(outdate)+" "+outtime,"MM/dd/yyyy 0h:0m am")
?endtime
= 01/05/2005 02:30:00 00 am

?(endtime - starttime)/60
= 220.000000
?totime(endtime-starttime,1,0)
= "3:40"

The above makes use of two variables which could be used within a layout. But I take it that you want a single expression so that you can assign it to another field. If so, these can be combined as follows:

?(scantime(dtoc(outdate)+" "+outtime,"MM/dd/yyyy 0h:0m am") - scantime(dtoc(indate)+" "+intime,"MM/dd/yyyy 0h:0m am"))/60
= 220.000000

I hope this helps.

Steve

[SwissCharles]

RE: Time Calculation

Brian,

This is from a message posted some time ago by Russ Boehle...

These are entered as field rules.
Time_in, Time_Out, Date_In and Date_Out are the fields in question here:

elapsed time:
totime(toseconds(Time_Out)-toseconds(Time_In)+((Date_Out-Date_In)*3600*24),1,0)

decimal elapsed time:
round((toseconds(Time_Out)-toseconds(Time_In)+((Date_Out-Date_In)*3600*24))/3600,2)

HTH

Charles

[BRIAN GRAY]

RE: Time Calculation

Hello,

Thank you all for your help

Brian