Need to Have Code give duration of time over 2 days

[someguyincali]

I have this code that I'm trying to modify.  When I enter a start time for 21:00 and an end time for 07:00

The existing code returns a negative number.  

I would like the function to assume that midnight passes if the original code returns a negative number and calculate duration.  I need it to return the duration in the same format. 

 

Thank in advance for any help.

    protected function getDuration($fromTime, $toTime) {
        list($startHour, $startMin) = explode(':', $fromTime);
        list($endHour, $endMin) = explode(':', $toTime);


        $durationMinutes = (intVal($endHour) - intVal($startHour)) * 60 + (intVal($endMin) - intVal($startMin));
        $hours = $durationMinutes / 60;


        return number_format($hours, 2);
    }

[Jacques1]

How are you going to deal with daylight saying time? The duration between 21:00 and 07:00 is not always 10 hours. It can also be 9 or 11 hours depending on the time zone and date.

 

So if you're dealing with concrete dates, it would make a lot more sense to pass actual timestamps to the function. The user may still just enter “21:00” and “07:00”, but your application would transform that into proper absolute timestamps.

[Strider64]

If you want to figure out duration of time you need actually timestamps like already stated or the Date and Time. 

 

Look into the DateTime class at php.net for it has a lot of built in functions that can be used, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

 

Here's an example -> 

<?php
date_default_timezone_set("America/Detroit");
$start = '2016-09-11 12:45:00';
$end = '2016-09-13 12:59:52';

$date1 = new \DateTime($start);
echo $date1->format("F d, Y");

$date2 = new \DateTime($end);
$diff = $date1->diff($date2);

echo "<pre>" . print_r($diff, 1) . "</pre>";