Convert a timedelta to days, hours and minutes

Question

I've got a timedelta. I want the days, hours and minutes from that - either as a tuple or a dictionary... I'm not fussed.

I must have done this a dozen times in a dozen languages over the years but Python usually has a simple answer to everything so I thought I'd ask here before busting out some nauseatingly simple (yet verbose) mathematics.

Mr Fooz raises a good point.

I'm dealing with "listings" (a bit like ebay listings) where each one has a duration. I'm trying to find the time left by doing when_added + duration - now

Am I right in saying that wouldn't account for DST? If not, what's the simplest way to add/subtract an hour?

Answer 1

timedeltas have a days and seconds attribute .. you can convert them yourself with ease.

Answer 2

days, hours, minutes = td.days, td.seconds // 3600, td.seconds // 60 % 60

As for DST, I think the best thing is to convert both datetime objects to seconds. This way the system calculates DST for you.

>>> m13 = datetime(2010, 3, 13, 8, 0, 0)  # 2010 March 13 8:00 AM
>>> m14 = datetime(2010, 3, 14, 8, 0, 0)  # DST starts on this day, in my time zone
>>> mktime(m14.timetuple()) - mktime(m13.timetuple())     # difference in seconds
82800.0
>>> _/3600                                                # convert to hours
23.0

Answer 3

If you have a datetime.timedelta value td, td.days already gives you the "days" you want. timedelta values keep fraction-of-day as seconds (not directly hours or minutes) so you'll indeed have to perform "nauseating simple mathematics", e.g.:

def days_hours_minutes(td):
  return td.days, td.seconds//3600, (td.seconds//60)%60