Time Column

[transmitthis]

I'm wondering what the options are when making a custom column for "Time"

Ideally it would be like the Date selector, where a calendar is available to quick select, but I imagine that's not possible for time.

So is there a nice way to display and/or enter time in a column

I have been looking at the python number formatting strings, but its too full of unfamiliar terms for me to understand.

usage will mostly be for small time increments below 4 hours and probably consisting of lots of mins. ie 1h 30min, 45min, 1h 15min, that kind of thing, if it makes a difference.

I did notice that the up/down arrows seem only to change whole integers, wondering if that is set or can be changed... anyway if anyone has any thoughts on time entry please let me know.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by transmitthis

I'm wondering what the options are when making a custom column for "Time"

Ideally it would be like the Date selector, where a calendar is available to quick select, but I imagine that's not possible for time.

So is there a nice way to display and/or enter time in a column

I have been looking at the python number formatting strings, but its too full of unfamiliar terms for me to understand.

usage will mostly be for small time increments below 4 hours and probably consisting of lots of mins. ie 1h 30min, 45min, 1h 15min, that kind of thing, if it makes a difference.

I did notice that the up/down arrows seem only to change whole integers, wondering if that is set or can be changed... anyway if anyone has any thoughts on time entry please let me know.

I use a custom daytime column that (automatically) gets a 'Set to Today' (Really 'NOW') that updates the value to the second (Sorting order is the clue, even though you can't see the time)

Look in the (save to disk) template editor: format_modtimes for code clues

[transmitthis]

thanks for helping Ducks,
But really this...
def evaluate(self, formatter, kwargs, mi, locals, fmt):
fmt_data = mi.get('format_metadata', {})
data = sorted(fmt_data.items(), key=lambda x:x[1]['mtime'], reverse=True)
return ','.join(k.upper()+':'+format_date(v['mtime'], fmt)
for k,v in data)
Means nothing to me


I just really want to know what to put in here - see attachment.

[transmitthis]

Still Stuck on this, is anyone able to help me make a simple time column?

Would be very grateful.

PS, I did try and find out answer myself, but then I took an arrow in the knee.

[chaley]

It seems that you want a column to express duration in minutes, not a time. I can think of one way to do this, but it isn't particularly pretty.

First: what doesn't work. Using the formatting feature of float and integer doesn't work because you cannot separate the number into the two hours/minutes components. Using a datetime with a format of "hh:mm" doesn't work because it isn't a duration; the rest of the date will be set to something, making the column not sortable.

What does work is to use a custom integer field to enter the number of minutes, and then use a custom composite field and a custom template function to format that number-of-minutes into hours and minutes. One possible template function is

Function: myHoursMinutes
Arg count: 1
Program code:
def evaluate(self, formatter, kwargs, mi, locals, x):
	if not x:
		return ''
	r = int(x)
	return "%d h %d min"%(r/60, r%60)

Assuming that the number-of-minutes column is named #myint, The template in the composite column would be something like:

{#myint:myHoursMinutes()}

Personally, I wouldn't bother with any of this. I would use a floating point column and enter the number of hours as the integer part and the number of minutes as the fractional part, and let it display as "1.45" or "2.00", etc.

[transmitthis]

Thanks chaley,
Yep your right, keeping it simple is better, and while I liked your suggestion I decided to forgo some sorting capability's and use a (Oh hang on they do sort in order of duration - weird) text field.

So went with this - and as bonus colour was an option, so longer gets redder.

Thanks all for your help, can get back to skyrim now, er I mean back to finding out if I can use calibre to store and index my recipes