Question

I have a ruby application where i need to get date-time difference in Days-Hours-Minutes format. For this i m using following function

def duration  (from_time, to_time)
   from_time = from_time.to_time if from_time.respond_to?(:to_time)
   to_time = to_time.to_time if to_time.respond_to?(:to_time)
   distance_in_seconds = ((to_time - from_time).abs).round

   secs  = distance_in_seconds.to_int
   mins  = secs / 60
   hours = mins / 60
   days  = hours / 24

   if days > 0
     "#{days}d #{hours % 24}h"
   elsif hours > 0
     "#{hours}h #{mins % 60}m"
   elsif mins > 0
     "#{mins}m"
 end
end

The above called like this from another function

duration(aw_updated, Time.now)

But some time it gives me wrong result,

when i display above values

aw_updated is 2012-09-19 04:23:34 UTC
Time.now is   2012-09-19 16:33:09 +0530
Time.now.utc is 2012-09-19 11:03:09 UTC 

And

Diff is 6h 26m

But my system time is 2012-09-19 16:33:09

Not sure where i m doing wrong , some UTC issue?

please advise

Answer 1

For correct answer your both time should have same timezone utc in this case

So it is converting 2012-09-19 16:33:09 +0530 into utc which gives 2012-09-19 11:03:09 UTC and hence difference is Diff is 6h 26m