ruby - Rails - Get the time difference in hours, minutes and seconds

Question

I'm looking for an idiomatic way to get the time passed since a given date in hours, minutes and seconds.

If the given date is 2013-10-25 23:55:00 and the current date is 2013-10-27 20:55:09, the returning value should be 45:03:09. The time_difference and time_diff gems won't work with this requirement.

Answer 1

You can try with this:

def time_diff(start_time, end_time)
  seconds_diff = (start_time - end_time).to_i.abs

  hours = seconds_diff / 3600
  seconds_diff -= hours * 3600

  minutes = seconds_diff / 60
  seconds_diff -= minutes * 60

  seconds = seconds_diff

  "#{hours.to_s.rjust(2, '0')}:#{minutes.to_s.rjust(2, '0')}:#{seconds.to_s.rjust(2, '0')}"
  # or, as hagello suggested in the comments:
  # '%02d:%02d:%02d' % [hours, minutes, seconds]
end

And use it:

time_diff(Time.now, Time.now-2.days-3.hours-4.minutes-5.seconds)
# => "51:04:04"