Convert seconds to hh:mm:ss in Python

Question

How do I convert an int (number of seconds) to the formats mm:ss or hh:mm:ss?

I need to do this with Python code (and if possible in a Django template).

Solution 1

I can't believe any of the many answers gives what I'd consider the "one obvious way to do it" (and I'm not even Dutch...!-) -- up to just below 24 hours' worth of seconds (86399 seconds, specifically):

>>> import time
>>> time.strftime('%H:%M:%S', time.gmtime(12345))
'03:25:45'

Doing it in a Django template's more finicky, since the time filter supports a funky time-formatting syntax (inspired, I believe, from PHP), and also needs the datetime module, and a timezone implementation such as pytz, to prep the data. For example:

>>> from django import template as tt
>>> import pytz
>>> import datetime
>>> tt.Template('{{ x|time:"H:i:s" }}').render(
...     tt.Context({'x': datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(12345, pytz.utc)}))
u'03:25:45'

Depending on your exact needs, it might be more convenient to define a custom filter for this formatting task in your app.

Solution 2

>>> a = datetime.timedelta(seconds=65)
datetime.timedelta(0, 65)
>>> str(a)
'0:01:05'

Solution 3

Read up on the datetime module.

SilentGhost's answer has the details my answer leaves out and is reposted here:

>>> a = datetime.timedelta(seconds=65)
datetime.timedelta(0, 65)
>>> str(a)
'0:01:05'

Solution 4

Code that does what was requested, with examples, and showing how cases he didn't specify are handled:

def format_seconds_to_hhmmss(seconds):
    hours = seconds // (60*60)
    seconds %= (60*60)
    minutes = seconds // 60
    seconds %= 60
    return "%02i:%02i:%02i" % (hours, minutes, seconds)
def format_seconds_to_mmss(seconds):
    minutes = seconds // 60
    seconds %= 60
    return "%02i:%02i" % (minutes, seconds)
minutes = 60
hours = 60*60
assert format_seconds_to_mmss(7*minutes + 30) == "07:30"
assert format_seconds_to_mmss(15*minutes + 30) == "15:30"
assert format_seconds_to_mmss(1000*minutes + 30) == "1000:30"
assert format_seconds_to_hhmmss(2*hours + 15*minutes + 30) == "02:15:30"
assert format_seconds_to_hhmmss(11*hours + 15*minutes + 30) == "11:15:30"
assert format_seconds_to_hhmmss(99*hours + 15*minutes + 30) == "99:15:30"
assert format_seconds_to_hhmmss(500*hours + 15*minutes + 30) == "500:15:30"

You can--and probably should--store this as a timedelta rather than an int, but that's a separate issue and timedelta doesn't actually make this particular task any easier.

Solution 5

You can calculate the number of minutes and hours from the number of seconds by simple division:

seconds = 12345
minutes = seconds // 60
hours = minutes // 60
print "%02d:%02d:%02d" % (hours, minutes % 60, seconds % 60)
print "%02d:%02d" % (minutes, seconds % 60)

Here // is Python's integer division.

View more solutions

Comments

[Guðmundur H]

minutes is modulo 60, so it's always < 60, so hours == 0...

[Glenn Maynard]

h:mm:sss isn't hh:mm:ss.

[Matt Howell]

@sth: SilentGhost has the deets.

[Glenn Maynard]

I don't think anything in datetime does what he wants. There's nothing like timedelta.strftime, so even if he stores his "number of seconds" as a timedelta (which he probably should), he'd still have to do the formatting himself. Converting it to a time would be a hack, since he does seem to have an amount of time (timedelta) and not a time of day (time).

[Matt Howell]

@Glenn: What's wrong with the str() representation?

[SilentGhost]

@Glenn: from the question it's quite clear that formatting requirement is rather fluid. And it's much easier to just convert to string and be happy with h:mm:ss then to multiply dirty hacks trying to get hh:mm:ss.

[Glenn Maynard]

It doesn't answer his question, or offer anything that would lead him to a good answer to his question--at best you'd have to manually prepend a 0 or strip off "0:", which isn't a good solution at all (depends on timedelta.__str__ behavior which isn't specified anywhere as far as I know, so it could change). So, yes.

[Glenn Maynard]

His question doesn't look fluid to me; it asks how to convert seconds to two specific formats, and almost everyone is responding with answers that simply don't do what he asked. Formatting this as he asked does not require anything approaching a hack.

[Matt Howell]

@Glenn: Dude, you're killing me from up on your idealistic high horse there. It does answer his question, even if it's not the model of perfection. (Manually having to append or prepend a "0" is not exactly an onerous burden.)

[Glenn Maynard]

He didn't say "format it something like this", he gave specific formats. I can't count the times I've formatted that way. Editing the string means you're depending on the specific behavior of timedelta's string formatting (if s[0:2] == "0:": ...), which is a bad idea. Maybe timedelta won't decide to format it as "h.mm.ss" in some locales now, but nothing says it can't in the future. It's simply a poor approach.

[Admin]

You could shorten the calculations a bit with divmod.

[SilentGhost]

while it's a minor issue, which is possibly irrelevant for the OP time.strftime('%H:%M:%S', time.gmtime(864001)) return a nasty surprise.

[SilentGhost]

:) I don't think that my solution breaks down, it still provides the most-readable output, since OP hasn't participated in the discussion around here, I'm free to assume that that's exactly what he wants.

[luator]

I really like this, because it can cope with seconds > one day in a nice way and can even handle fractions of seconds: str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=1111111.11)) results in '12 days, 20:38:31.110000'. Exactly what I was looking for :)

[Johannes Overmann]

Nope. Not pythonic at all.

[Peter Mortensen]

Re "...any of the many answers": Do you mean "...none of the many answers"?

[Granny Aching]

As @AlexMartelli says, this doesn't work correctly if the number of seconds is more than a day. Also, str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=<number>)) is more elegant

[milahu]

bugfix for secondsToStr: round milliseconds. replace "t*1000" with "round(t*1000)"

[Merovex]

So, I found this trying to solve the question, and this worked perfect for me. 1106236 seconds became "12 days, 19:17:16"

[Null511]

This is not only wasteful of memory, but also unpleasant to read and unlikely to serve any kind of performance improvement.

[PaulMcG]

Wow, it has been almost 10 years since I wrote this, sometimes frivolous answers can give some opportunities for learning some new things - thanks for the comment!

[Skippy le Grand Gourou]

@GlennMaynard If "hh" is required, a simple .zfill(7) will take care of it.

[Stefano]

I don't get the 'dutch' thing :( Also, I'm not dutch either.

[user3761340]

At the very least provide the specific code to implement the modulus. This answer come across to me as flippantly saying, "hey, there are 60 seconds in a minute--in case you didn't know."