Rails - Jul 2009 - If storing duration as integer seconds... question on building a helper

Ok, I''m new to rails (and Ruby)...

I''m trying to figure out the best practice for handling a duration
field (for example "time it takes someone to run a mile." )

All I care about is seconds (not milliseconds) so figured I''d store
the field as an integer.

I want to allow the user to enter in the time manually as:

//1 minute 5 seconds:
1:05
OR
01:05

//2 hours 4 minutes 6 seconds:
2:04:06
OR
02:04:06


I have a helper that will convert seconds to a time display as:

def seconds_to_time seconds
     Time.at(seconds).gmtime.strftime(''%R:%S'')
end

But how should I handle the conversion the other way around from the
input (ie convert 01:35 to seconds?)
Do I need to do some complex parsing of the String itself parsing out
: (remember it could be xx:xx:xx or just xx:xx )
or can I somehow leverage Time.parse ?

I would think this would come up quite often so there must be a best
practice or easy way to handle this kind of thing.

Thanks in advance

I currently decided to just use something like:

def time_to_seconds time_display
     time = time_display.split(":")
     seconds = 0
     modifiers = [ 1, 60, 360  ]
     time.each_with_index do | t, i |
        seconds = seconds + ( t.to_i * modifiers[time.length -1 - i] )
     end
     return seconds
  end


On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 7:23 PM,
Rick<rickcr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Ok, I''m new to rails (and Ruby)...
>
> I''m trying to figure out the best practice for handling a duration
> field (for example "time it takes someone to run a mile." )
>
> All I care about is seconds (not milliseconds) so figured I''d
store
> the field as an integer.
>
> I want to allow the user to enter in the time manually as:
>
> //1 minute 5 seconds:
> 1:05
> OR
> 01:05
>
> //2 hours 4 minutes 6 seconds:
> 2:04:06
> OR
> 02:04:06
>
>
> I have a helper that will convert seconds to a time display as:
>
> def seconds_to_time seconds
>     Time.at(seconds).gmtime.strftime(''%R:%S'')
> end
>
> But how should I handle the conversion the other way around from the
> input (ie convert 01:35 to seconds?)
> Do I need to do some complex parsing of the String itself parsing out
> : (remember it could be xx:xx:xx or just xx:xx )
> or can I somehow leverage Time.parse ?
>
> I would think this would come up quite often so there must be a best
> practice or easy way to handle this kind of thing.
>
> Thanks in advance
>


-- 
Rick R

On Jul 5, 2009, at 8:44 PM, Rick wrote:
>
> I currently decided to just use something like:
>
> def time_to_seconds time_display
>     time = time_display.split(":")
>     seconds = 0
>     modifiers = [ 1, 60, 360  ]
>     time.each_with_index do | t, i |
>        seconds = seconds + ( t.to_i * modifiers[time.length -1 - i] )
>     end
>     return seconds
>  end
>
If you''re just looking for a quick way to convert from hh:mm:ss to  
seconds, how about:

time_string.split('':'').inject(0){|a, m| a = a * 60 + m.to_i}

This presumes that the smallest increment in the string is seconds,  
and the largest hours. However, that is how you described the problem.

WDYT?

> On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 7:23 PM,
Rick<rickcr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Ok, I''m new to rails (and Ruby)...
>>
>> I''m trying to figure out the best practice for handling a
duration
>> field (for example "time it takes someone to run a mile." )
>>
>> All I care about is seconds (not milliseconds) so figured I''d
store
>> the field as an integer.
>>
>> I want to allow the user to enter in the time manually as:
>>
>> //1 minute 5 seconds:
>> 1:05
>> OR
>> 01:05
>>
>> //2 hours 4 minutes 6 seconds:
>> 2:04:06
>> OR
>> 02:04:06
>>
>>
>> I have a helper that will convert seconds to a time display as:
>>
>> def seconds_to_time seconds
>>     Time.at(seconds).gmtime.strftime(''%R:%S'')
>> end
>>
>> But how should I handle the conversion the other way around from the
>> input (ie convert 01:35 to seconds?)
>> Do I need to do some complex parsing of the String itself parsing out
>> : (remember it could be xx:xx:xx or just xx:xx )
>> or can I somehow leverage Time.parse ?
>>
>> I would think this would come up quite often so there must be a best
>> practice or easy way to handle this kind of thing.
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Rick R
>
> >

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 2:52 PM,
s.ross<cwdinfo-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
>
> On Jul 5, 2009, at 8:44 PM, Rick wrote:
>
>>
>> I currently decided to just use something like:
>>
>> def time_to_seconds time_display
>>     time = time_display.split(":")
>>     seconds = 0
>>     modifiers = [ 1, 60, 360  ]
>>     time.each_with_index do | t, i |
>>        seconds = seconds + ( t.to_i * modifiers[time.length -1 - i] )
>>     end
>>     return seconds
>>  end
>>
>
> If you''re just looking for a quick way to convert from hh:mm:ss to
> seconds, how about:
>
> time_string.split('':'').inject(0){|a, m| a = a * 60 +
m.to_i}
>
Wow! That looks awesome. I''m new to ruby so just looked into the
inject method. I''ll test it shortly.

Thanks a lot. (It looks like it should work if you provided just
minutes and seconds 10:04 or  hours:min:sec  1:14:05 )