Display duration in a human readable format such as "X hours, Y minutes"

Question

I am using Rails 4, Ruby 2.1 with PostgreSQL.

I have a database field called duration which is an interval data type.

When pulling out the data in this column it returns in the format of hh:mm:ss, e.g. 01:30:00.

I am trying to figure out a way to display this as 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Other examples:

• 02:00:00 to 2 hours
• 02:15:00 to 2 hours, 15 minutes
• 02:01:00 to 2 hours, 1 minute

Answer 1

Just use duration + inspect

seconds = 86400 + 3600 + 15
ActiveSupport::Duration.build(seconds).inspect
=> "1 day, 1 hour, and 15.0 seconds"

Or a it can be a little be customized

ActiveSupport::Duration.build(seconds).parts.map do |key, value|
  [value.to_i, key].join 
end.join(' ')
=> "1days 1hours 15seconds"

P.S.

You can get seconds with

1.day.to_i
=> 86400

Time can be parsed only in ISO8601 format

ActiveSupport::Duration.parse("PT2H15M").inspect
=> "2 hours and 15 minutes"

Answer 2

I would start with something like this:

def duration_of_interval_in_words(interval)
  hours, minutes, seconds = interval.split(':').map(&:to_i)

  [].tap do |parts|
    parts << "#{hours} hour".pluralize(hours)       unless hours.zero?
    parts << "#{minutes} minute".pluralize(minutes) unless minutes.zero?
    parts << "#{seconds} hour".pluralize(seconds)   unless seconds.zero?
  end.join(', ')
end

duration_of_interval_in_words('02:00:00')
# => '2 hours'

duration_of_interval_in_words('02:01:00')
# => '2 hours, 1 minute'

duration_of_interval_in_words('02:15:00')
# => '2 hours, 15 minutes'

Answer 3

See also ActionView::Helpers::DateHelper distance_of_time_in_words (and related)

e.g.

0 <-> 29 secs # => less than a minute
30 secs <-> 1 min, 29 secs # => 1 minute
1 min, 30 secs <-> 44 mins, 29 secs # => [2..44] minutes
... etc

https://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/DateHelper/distance_of_time_in_words

Perhaps not appropriate to include in a model validation error? (which is my use case)

Answer 4

Here is a locale-aware helper method which builds upon MasonMc's answer.

# app/helpers/date_time_helper.rb
module DateTimeHelper
  def humanized_duration(duration)
    ActiveSupport::Duration.build(duration).parts.except(:seconds).collect do |key, val|
      t(:"datetime.distance_in_words.x_#{key}", count: val)
    end.join(', ')
  end
end

You can also replace join(', ') with to_sentence if it reads better, or get fancy and allow passing a locale, like distance_of_time_in_words.

Gotcha

Rather counter-intuitively, x_hours is absent from Rails' default locale file because distance_of_time_in_words doesn't use it. You'll need to add it yourself, even if using the rails-i18n gem.

# config/locales/en.datetime.yml
en:
  datetime:
    distance_in_words:
      x_hours:
        one: "one hour"
        other: "%{count} hours"

Here's the output:

humanized_duration(100)
# => '1 minute'
humanized_duration(12.34.hours)
# => '12 hours, 20 minutes'
humanized_duration(42.hours)
# => '1 day, 18 hours, 25 minutes'

Answer 5

You can try following method to display such as:

• minutes_to_human(45) # 45 minutes
• minutes_to_human(120) # 2 hours
• minutes_to_human(75) # 2.5 hours
• minutes_to_human(75) # 1.15 hours

---

def minutes_to_human(minutes)
  result = {}

  hours = minutes / 60
  result[:hours] = hours if hours.positive?
  result[:minutes] = ((minutes * 60) - (hours * 60 * 60)) / 60 if minutes % 60 != 0

  result[:minutes] /= 60.0 if result.key?(:hours) && result.key?(:minutes)

  return I18n.t('helper.minutes_to_human.hours_minutes', time: (result[:hours] + result[:minutes]).round(2)) if result.key?(:hours) && result.key?(:minutes)
  return I18n.t('helper.minutes_to_human.hours', count: result[:hours]) if result.key?(:hours)
  return I18n.t('helper.minutes_to_human.minutes', count: result[:minutes].round) if result.key?(:minutes)
  ''
end

---

Translations:

en:
  helper:
    minutes_to_human:
      minutes:
        zero: '%{count} minute'
        one: '%{count} minute'
        other: '%{count} minutes'
      hours:
        one: '%{count} hour'
        other: '%{count} hours'
      hours_minutes: '%{time} hours'

Answer 6

This worked for me:

irb(main):030:0> def humanized_duration(seconds)
irb(main):031:1>   ActiveSupport::Duration.build(seconds).parts.except(:seconds).reduce("") do |output, (key, val)|
irb(main):032:2*       output+= "#{val}#{key.to_s.first} "
irb(main):033:2>     end.strip
irb(main):034:1>   end
=> :humanized_duration
irb(main):035:0> humanized_duration(920)
=> "15m"
irb(main):036:0> humanized_duration(3920)
=> "1h 5m"
irb(main):037:0> humanized_duration(6920)
=> "1h 55m"
irb(main):038:0> humanized_duration(10800)
=> "3h"

You can change the format you want the resulting string to be inside the reduce. I like the 'h' and 'm' for hours and minutes. And I excluded the seconds from the duration parts since that wasn't important for my usage of it.

Answer 7

I find that duration.inspect serve the purpose pretty well.

> 10.years.inspect
=> "10 years"