Question

I have a database table storing opening hours of a shop as a time range as a VARCHAR like ‘9am-5pm’ and ‘9am-3pm, 5pm-11pm’. I want to compare these opening hours with the current time, so if the current time is 2pm, I will use PHP to echo a text stating that the shop is now open, and if the current time is 11.30pm, the shop will be shown as closed.

1. How do I compare the current time with the opening hours time range in the tables
2. Is my method of storing time range suitable?

I’m using Codeigniter, so if theres useful functions do let me know too!

Answer 1

You should use 2 columns (one for open time, one for close time) both using the TIME datatype: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/time.html

By doing that, you can then use BETWEEN and NOW(): SELECT * FROM shop WHERE CAST(NOW() AS TIME) BETWEEN open_time AND close_time;

Edit to include table definition:

CREATE TABLE shop_hours (
  shop_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
  day_of_week INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL, -- 0-6
  open_time TIME NOT NULL,
  close_time TIME NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY(shop_id, day_of_week, open_time, close_time)
);