Question

I developed a function to obtain equal time intervals within a user generated time-frame.

$start         = strtotime("12:00");    //start at...
$end           = strtotime("18:00");    //end at...
$timeframe     = $end - $start;         //time-frame    
$intervals     = 3;                     //number of intervals within time-frame
$interval_time = $timeframe/$intervals; //time of each interval

for($i = 0, $start; 
    $i < $intervals; 
    $i++, $start = strtotime("+$interval_time seconds", $start)) //increment time
    { 
        $new_time = date('H:i:s a', $start); 
        echo "$new_time \n"; 
    }

The code above outputs

 12:00:00 pm 14:00:00 pm 16:00:00 pm

What code can I incorporate to divide each interval and obtain the middle? For example to get from the code above

13:00:00 pm 15:00:00 pm 17:00:00 pm

Please kindly advise 🙂

Answer 1

Replace your for loop with:

$half_interval = $interval_time / 2;
$mid = $start + $half_interval;
for ( $i = 1; $i < $intervals; $i ++) {
    echo date('H:i:s a', $mid) . " \n";
    $mid += $interval_time;
}
echo date('H:i:s a', $mid) . " \n";

Admittedly a simple approach. I’m sure improvements are possible, but leave them as an exercise for the reader! 😉