Django model elapsed time between two DateTimeFields - django

Question

I am pretty new to django and haven't been able to find a way to get the elapsed time between two DateTimeFields and save it to another model.
from django.db import models
class Timesheet(models.Model):
startTime = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
endTime = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True)
duration = models.DateTimeField(endTime - startTime)
def _str_(self):
return self.startTime
How can I make duration = endTime - startTime?
I am also using a PostgreSQL database.

Answer 1

I wouldn't use a dedicated model field for the duration.
I would use a property on the model instead for the same functionality.
Something like:
#property
def duration(self)
return self.end_time - self.startime
Lucas has a good idea of using an annotation, but if you have a Timesheet instance somewhere that didn't come from that object manager and was not previously annotated, you would have to do a separate database hit to actually annotate it.
This property is used as such:
some_timesheet_instance.duration

Answer 2

Use annotate() to compute the duration field at query time for each object in the queryset
from django.db.models import F, ExpressionWrapper, fields
timesheets = Timesheet.objects.annotate(
duration=ExpressionWrapper(
F('endTime') - F('startTime'),
output_field=fields.DurationField()
)
)
timesheets[0].duration # datetime.timedelta(0, 722, 18373)
Is possible perform another queryset methods over annotations like filter(), order_by(), aggregate(), etc.
timesheets.order_by('-duration')
timesheets.aggregate(Avg('duration')) # {'duration__avg': datetime.timedelta(0, 26473, 292625)}

Answer 3

duration = timesheet.end_time - timesheet.start_time
When you substract two datetime instances you don't get another datetime instance but a timedelta instace, which is just the days, seconds and microseconds difference between the two datetimes. You can't store a timedelta in a DateTimefield, but you can use an IntegerField, for example:
days_in_seconds = duration.days * 86400 # days difference by seconds in a day
duration_in_seconds = duration.seconds + days_in_seconds # duration in seconds
When you want to access the duration as timedelta you just do:
import datetime
duration = datetime.timedelta(seconds=timesheet.duration)
You can also store it as FloatField as suggested in this question.