calculating time remaining using php time() - php

I have a php script where I need to make sure a pre-set "future" time has not passed.
When the time is originally logged (or passed and needs relogged), I am taking:
$newTime = time() + 15000; // 2.5 minutes from "now"
The system is tossing this in the DB no problem and the numbers appear to be correct.
Now, when the page is loaded, it pulls the number from the DB and loads it into the .php file:
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors',1);
$tname = $_SESSION['username']."Data";
$results = $conn->query("SELECT val FROM $tname where pri='pettyTimer'") or die(mysqli_error($conn));
//$conn declared elsewhere for connection and does work properly
$row = $results->fetch_assoc();
$timer = $row['val'];
I am then comparing the times:
$now = time();
if ($timer > time()) { //script below
} else {
//more script that seems to be working fine
}
When the original conditional $timer > time() is true I am trying to break down the minutes and seconds of the time remaining and echoing them in a basic format that is readable to the user:
$raw = ($timer - $now);
$minutesLeft = floor($raw / 60000);
$totalMinutes2Mils = $minutesLeft * 60000;
$totalRemainingSecs = round(($raw - $totalMinutes2Mils) / (1000));
echo "You are still laying low from the last job you ran. You still have ".$minutesLeft." Minutes and ".$totalRemainingSecs." Seconds left.";
My problem is, the time does not appear to be shifting when I refresh/reload the page.
I echoed both time() and $timer and they are 15000 milliseconds apart when I first loaded it, so this should only exist (conditional be true) for about 2.5 minutes, but I've been working at least 5 minutes since my last set and it's still at 14 seconds.
Can someone please double check my math to make sure I'm calculating this correctly? Thanks!

The time() function returns the current time in the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT).
http://www.w3schools.com/php/func_date_time.asp
You are treating it as milliseconds, but should be treating it as straight seconds. take about /1000 and you should be ok.
$minutesLeft = floor($raw / 60);
$totalMinutes2Mils = $minutesLeft * 60;
$newTime = time() + (60*2.5); // 2.5 minutes from "now"

time() returns seconds, not milliseconds, so you should add 150 instead of 15000 to get 2:30 minutes.

Related

PHP Session Timer Works Initially but Gone Wrong

So I have a php session timer that works but somehow gets bugged out after awhile... this is the code and the console log I got. I'm looking for a fix to this problem, or possibly a different set of code to achieve the same timer effect (as I'm not sure if using session is the best method for a timer)
session_start();
function timer($time) {
//Set the countdown to 120 seconds.
$_SESSION['countdown'] = $time*60;
//Store the timestamp of when the countdown began.
$_SESSION['time_started'] = time();
$now = time();
$timeSince = $now - $_SESSION['time_started'];
$remainingSeconds = abs($_SESSION['countdown'] - $timeSince);
$counter = 0;
$minutes = $remainingSeconds/60;
echo "$minutes minutes countdown starts.".PHP_EOL;
while($remainingSeconds >= 1) {
$now = time();
$timeSince = $now - $_SESSION['time_started'];
if (($timeSince-$counter) >= 60) {
$remainingSeconds = abs($_SESSION['countdown'] - $timeSince);
$counter = $timeSince;
$minutes = $remainingSeconds/60;
echo "$minutes minutes has passed.".PHP_EOL;
}
}
if($remainingSeconds < 1){
session_abort();
return true;
}
}
if($this->timer(30)) {
// do whatever
echo "$time has passed";
}
Here's what happens in the console:
30 minutes countdown starts.
29 minutes has passed.
.... (continue as per pattern)
16 minutes has passed.
15 minutes has passed. (problem occurs here)
8.7166666666667 minutes has passed.
7.7166666666667 minutes has passed.
6.7166666666667 minutes has passed.
.... (continue as per pattern)
0.71666666666667 minutes has passed.
0.28333333333333 minutes has passed.
1.2833333333333 minutes has passed.
2.2833333333333 minutes has passed.
.... (continue as per pattern all the way)
Extra notes: The session timer doesn't always recur this same pattern, there have been times when it ran through the entire 30minutes and managed to echo "$time has passed"; while the bug only occured later on
I haven't run your, but just from reading it I think there are a few things very wrong with it.
Sessions. You're not using them right.
Session values should only be set once, meaning before you do $_SESSION['countdown'] = $time*60; and $_SESSION['time_started'] = time();, you should check if they already exist or not, and only assign if nonexistent. Your current code resets the clock every time the page is refreshed, which defeats the purpose of sessions.
abs. I think you're not using them right either.
You shouldn't abs the remaining seconds all the time. $remainingSeconds = abs($_SESSION['countdown'] - $timeSince); should be allowed to go into negative. Negative remaining seconds mean your timeout has expired / you've missed it! Calling abs means you're effectively letting it go forever if you by any chance miss the exact time of your event. This is the answer to your main problem. Fix this and your counter will stop going to zero and back up again.
You're relying on your code correctly checking every single second. But it doesn't.
The nasty decimals you're getting happen when for some reason your code gets delayed and doesn't correctly check the 60th second, which means your division by 60 is not perfectly round and you get 8.7166666 minutes.
If you start by removing the abs calls and generally try to simplify your code a bit, I believe you'll quickly get it to work as intended.
// Edit 1
This is a very naive, but simplified approach to your problem. I left two different outputs in there for you to pick one.
function timer($time) {
echo "$time minutes countdown starts." . PHP_EOL;
// Save the date in future when the timer should stop
$endTime = time() + $time * 60;
// Keeps track of last full minute to simplify logs
$lastFullMinute = $time;
while(true) {
$timeRemaining = $endTime - time();
if ($timeRemaining <= 0) {
// Time remaining is less than zero, which means we've gone beyond the end date.
// End the loop
return;
}
// Round up!
$minutesRemaining = ceil($timeRemaining / 60);
if ($minutesRemaining != $lastFullMinute) {
// Current "minute" is different than the previous one, so display a nice message
// If you want to show how many minutes are remainig, use this:
echo "$minutesRemaining minutes remaining." . PHP_EOL;
// If you want to show how many minutes have passed, you have to take mintutesRemaining away from the original time
$minutesPassed = $time - $minutesRemaining;
echo "$minutesPassed minutes passed." . PHP_EOL;
$lastFullMinute = $minutesRemaining;
}
}
}
The main way for you to improve it further would be to use the sleep function http://php.net/manual/en/function.sleep.php. Currently the while loop will hog all the CPU by constantly checking if the timer happened, so you should sleep for a few seconds inside.
What do you think of this solution? referenced from above
function timer($time) {
echo "$time minutes countdown starts." . PHP_EOL;
// Save the date in future when the timer should stop
$endTime = time() + $time*60;
while(true) {
sleep(20);
$secondsRemaining = $endTime - time();
if ($secondsRemaining <= 0) {
echo 'Finished';
return true;
}
}
}

PHP/SQL Variable manipulation

I have the following variables:
$days_a = $array_total['days']; // This one display days
$hours_a = $array_total['hours']; // This one display hours
$minutes_a = $array_total['minutes']; // This one display minutes
$seconds_a = $array_total['seconds']; // This one display seconds
These variables give me the current session time, here all works.
Now the problem...
I have then these variables:
$days_f = $fetch_s['days'];
$hours_f = $fetch_s['hours'];
$minutes_f = $fetch_s['minutes'];
$seconds_f = $fetch_s['seconds'];
These display the time that the user entered in the website previously, they took the values from the database... I did this for add the current session variable values to the values in the MySQL Db:
$days_2 = $days_a + $days_f;
$hours_2 = $hours_a + $hours_f;
$minutes_2 = $minutes_a + $minutes_f;
$seconds_2 = $seconds_a + $seconds_f;
But I need that each 60 seconds it add 1 to $minutes_2 , each 60 minutes it add 1 to $hours_2 and each 24 hours it add 1 to $days_2
For example if I have 118 seconds I need that it adds 1 to $minutes_2 and set the variable $seconds_2 to 58 etc...
How can this be done?
I tried something like that:
$seconds = $seconds_2 % 60;
$minutes_3 = $seconds_2 / 60;
$minutes = $minutes_3 % 60;
$hours_3 = $minutes / 60;
$hours = $hours_3 % 24;
$days = $hours / 24;
$days = (int)$days_int;
But this won't work... Someone know how do that in a similar or different way?
Could someone give me the code? Please
In my experience it is easier to do these calculations by converting to UNIX seconds for a given time, adding the seconds, the converting back. That way the system does all the day, hour, minute and seconds book-keeping for you. Use e.g. mktime to convert to UNIX seconds (you can use your existing time parameters), and date, strftime to convert back to day, hour, minutes, seconds.

PHP Checking if timestamp is less than 30 minutes old

I'm getting a list of items from my database, each has a CURRENT_TIMESTAMP which i have changed into 'x minutes ago' with the help of timeago. So that's working fine. But the problem is i also want a "NEW" banner on items which are less than 30 minutes old. How can i take the generated timestamp (for example: 2012-07-18 21:11:12) and say if it's less than 30 minutes from the current time, then echo the "NEW" banner on that item.
Use strtotime("-30 minutes") and then see if your row's timestamp is greater than that.
Example:
<?php
if(strtotime($mysql_timestamp) > strtotime("-30 minutes")) {
$this_is_new = true;
}
?>
I'm using strtotime() twice here to get unix timestamps for your mysql date, and then again to get what the timestamp was 30 minutes ago. If the timestamp from 30 mins ago is greater than the timestamp of the mysql record, then it must have been created more than 30 minutes go.
Try something like this, using PHP's DateTime object:
$now = new DateTime();
$then = DateTime($timestamp); // "2012-07-18 21:11:12" for example
$diff = $now->diff($then);
$minutes = ($diff->format('%a') * 1440) + // total days converted to minutes
($diff->format('%h') * 60) + // hours converted to minutes
$diff->format('%i'); // minutes
if ($minutes <= 30) {
echo "NEW";
}
Edit: Mike is right, I forgot that for whatever reason, only %a actually returns the total of its type (in this case days). All the others are for displaying time formatting. I've extended the above to actually work.
You can do like this also -
$currentTime=time();
to check the last updated time is 30 minute old or not
last_updated_at < $currentTime - (60*30)

PHP : How to calculate the remaining time in minutes?

Suppose the target time is 4.30 pm and the current time is 3.25 pm , how will i calculate the minutes remaining to reach the target time ? I need the result in minutes.
session_start();
$m=30;
//unset($_SESSION['starttime']);
if(!$_SESSION['starttime']){
$_SESSION['starttime']=date('Y-m-d h:i:s');
}
$stime=strtotime($_SESSION['starttime']);
$ttime=strtotime((date('Y-m-d h:i:s',strtotime("+$m minutes"))));-->Here I want to calcuate the target time; the time is session + 30 minutes. How will i do that
echo round(abs($ttime-$stime)/60);
Krishnik
A quick calculation of the difference between two times can be done like this:
$start = strtotime("4:30");
$stop = strtotime("6:30");
$diff = ($stop - $start); //Diff in seconds
echo $diff/3600; //Return 2 hours. Divide by something else to get in mins etc.
Edit*
Might as well add the answer to your problem too:
$start = strtotime("3:25");
$stop = strtotime("4:30");
$diff = ($stop - $start);
echo $diff/60; //Echoes 65 min
Oh and one more edit:) If the times are diffent dates, like start is 23:45 one day and end is 0:30 the next you need to add a date too to the strtotime.

add five minute to filemtime function (php)!

i have the flowing code
$LastModified = filemtime($somefile) ;
i want to add ten minute to last modified time and compare with current time then if $LastModified+ 10 minute is equal to current time delete the file . how can i do that ?! i'm little confusing with unix time stamp .
Since the UNIX timestamp is expressed in "seconds since 1970", you just add five minutes in seconds:
$LastModPlusFiveMinutes = $lastModified + (60 * 5);
Or, maybe more readable:
$LastModPlusFiveMinutes = strtotime("+5 minutes", $lastModified);
The unix timestamp is the number of seconds that have passed since Jan 1st, 1970.
Therefore to add 10 minutes you need to add 600 (seconds). To get the current time call time().
e.g.
$LastModified = filemtime($somefile);
if ($LastModified+600 <= time())
{
// delete the file
}
(Note that you said "if $LastModified+ 10 minute is equal to current time delete the file" - I presume you actually meant equal to or less than, otherwise replace <= with == above).
You wrote 5 minutes in the topic and 10 minutes in the context.
Anyway here is the code
$diff = time() - $LastModified ;
if( $diff >= 10 * 60 ){ // don't use ==, you may not find the right second..
//action
}
$LastModified = filemtime($somefile);
$now = time();
if(strtotime($LastModified.'+10 minutes') >= $now){
// delete the file.
}
That should do it.

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