Groovy time durations

Carl Bourne  picture Carl Bourne · Oct 11, 2010 · Viewed 39.6k times · Source

Hi I'm trying to calculate the difference (duration) between two times in Groovy. e.g.

start =  "2010-10-07T22:15:33.110+01:00"
stop =   "2010-10-07T22:19:52.356+01:00"

Ideally I would like the get the duration returned in Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Milliseconds.

Can anybody please help. I've tried to use Groovy's duration classes but have not been able to make any progress.

Thanks for your assistance.

Answer

Demian picture Demian · Oct 13, 2010

If you just want to find the difference between two times you create yourself (for instance to see how long something takes to execute) you could use:

import groovy.time.*

def timeStart = new Date()
// Some code you want to time
def timeStop = new Date()
TimeDuration duration = TimeCategory.minus(timeStop, timeStart)
println duration

If you specifically need to work with the dates as supplied as string above. Try this, first the format of them is a bit odd, in particular the +01:00, which is the timezone, I would expect it to be +0100 for format to work. You could just remove the timezone I just did a replace.

import groovy.time.*

def start = Date.parse("yyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ","2010-10-07T22:15:33.110+01:00".replace("+01:00","+0100"))
println start
def end = Date.parse("yyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ","2010-10-07T22:19:52.356+01:00".replace("+01:00","+0100"))
println end
TimeDuration duration = TimeCategory.minus(end, start)
println duration

Outputs

Thu Oct 07 15:15:33 MDT 2010
Thu Oct 07 15:19:52 MDT 2010
4 minutes, 19.246 seconds