Difference in minutes from two time fields in MySQL

Question

I set up my MySQL database with the field \'time\'

It is not HH:MM in the traditional sense, it is the time an event occurred, so an event with the value of 5:45 occ

Answer 1

For me this worked:

TIMESTAMPDIFF(MINUTE, T0.created, T0.modified)

Reference: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_timestampdiff

Answer 2

I used UNIX_TIMESTAMP(event1)-UNIX_TIMESTAMP(event2), which gives you seconds between events. Divide it by 60.0 and you will get a decimal as per your requirement. This solution assumes, your columns are date-compatible values. It will work really fast if they are TIMESTAMPs.

UPDATE: This solution only works with timestamp data types, not time datatypes as in original question.

Answer 3

I needed similar. Two useful functions: TIME_TO_SEC and SUBTIME.

e.g. if your time fields were normal HH:MM times, then

SELECT (TIME_TO_SEC(end_time) - TIME_TO_SEC(start_time))/60 AS `minutes` 

In your case, as I understand it, the times are backwards, ie. 12:00<6:00 so your end_time and start_time would need swapping.

If you wanted the output in HH:MM:SS you could do

SELECT SUBTIME(end_time, start_time)

Answer 4

Just use

TIMEDIFF(fromtime, totime):

SELECT TIMEDIFF("12:25", "5:45");

If you need a decimal, use TIME_TO_SEC()/3600 (it assumes you passed it seconds, but the format you're storing the times in is vague and SQL probably will interpret them as HH:MM - you can fix this with CONCAT("00:",MinuteSecondField) maybe?) - then you can use TIME_TO_SEC()/60, which is more correct)