PHP: Generate Carbon array with opening and closing times (per day) - php

Question

The desired result
I would like to have an associative array that contains a range of times (between opening and closing times) with an interval of 15 minutes. For example:
[
'2017-01-16' => [ // Start of the week (Monday)
'08:00', // Opening time
'08:15',
'08:30',
// Etc..
'18:00', // Closing time
],
'2017-01-17' => [ // Tuesday
'10:00', // Opening time
'10:15',
'10:30',
// Etc..
'22:00', // Closing time
],
// For every day in the week.
];
Another thing I would like to be able to do, is: Take a range of times (e.g. 09:00 - 10:00) and remove it from the array (at a specific date key)
The steps I made (so far)
I have an array that looks just like the one above. But.. it starts with 00:00 and ends at 23:45. With the following code (mainly from another question at Stackoverflow):
private function generateDateRange(Carbon $start_date, Carbon $end_date)
{
$dates = [];
while ($start_date->lte($end_date)) {
if(! array_key_exists($start_date->format('Y-m-d'), $dates)) {
$dates[$start_date->format('Y-m-d')] = [];
} else {
array_push($dates[$start_date->format('Y-m-d')], $start_date->format('H:i'));
if(in_array($start_date->format('H:i'), $dates[$start_date->format('Y-m-d')])) {
$start_date->addMinutes(15);
} else {
$start_date->addDay();
}
}
}
return $dates;
}
$start = Carbon::now()->startOfWeek();
$end = Carbon::now()->endOfWeek();
$range = $this->generateDateRange($start, $end);
My question
How can I do this in PHP (Laravel)? I am planning to make this (more) dynamic by using a database. But first I want to have a working basic.
Does someone know what I could do to reach the desired result?

Answer 1

Try this:
private function generateDateRange(Carbon $start_date, Carbon $end_date,$slot_duration = 15)
{
$dates = [];
$slots = $start_date->diffInMinutes($end_date)/$slot_duration;
//first unchanged time
$dates[$start_date->toDateString()][]=$start_date->toTimeString();
for($s = 1;$s <=$slots;$s++){
$dates[$start_date->toDateString()][]=$start_date->addMinute($slot_duration)->toTimeString();
}
return $dates;
}