Generating list of 5 minute interval between two times

Question

I have the following strings:

start = "07:00:00"
end = "17:00:00"

How can I generate a list of 5 minute interval between those times, ie

["07:00:00","07:05:00",...,"16:55:00","17:00:00"]

Answer 1

This works for me, I'm sure you can figure out how to put the results in the list instead of printing them out:

>>> import datetime
>>> start = "07:00:00"
>>> end = "17:00:00"
>>> delta = datetime.timedelta(minutes=5)
>>> start = datetime.datetime.strptime( start, '%H:%M:%S' )
>>> end = datetime.datetime.strptime( end, '%H:%M:%S' )
>>> t = start
>>> while t <= end :
...     print datetime.datetime.strftime( t, '%H:%M:%S')
...     t += delta
... 
07:00:00
07:05:00
07:10:00
07:15:00
07:20:00
07:25:00
07:30:00
07:35:00
07:40:00
07:45:00
07:50:00
07:55:00
08:00:00
08:05:00
08:10:00
08:15:00
08:20:00
08:25:00
08:30:00
08:35:00
08:40:00
08:45:00
08:50:00
08:55:00
09:00:00
09:05:00
09:10:00
09:15:00
09:20:00
09:25:00
09:30:00
09:35:00
09:40:00
09:45:00
09:50:00
09:55:00
10:00:00
10:05:00
10:10:00
10:15:00
10:20:00
10:25:00
10:30:00
10:35:00
10:40:00
10:45:00
10:50:00
10:55:00
11:00:00
11:05:00
11:10:00
11:15:00
11:20:00
11:25:00
11:30:00
11:35:00
11:40:00
11:45:00
11:50:00
11:55:00
12:00:00
12:05:00
12:10:00
12:15:00
12:20:00
12:25:00
12:30:00
12:35:00
12:40:00
12:45:00
12:50:00
12:55:00
13:00:00
13:05:00
13:10:00
13:15:00
13:20:00
13:25:00
13:30:00
13:35:00
13:40:00
13:45:00
13:50:00
13:55:00
14:00:00
14:05:00
14:10:00
14:15:00
14:20:00
14:25:00
14:30:00
14:35:00
14:40:00
14:45:00
14:50:00
14:55:00
15:00:00
15:05:00
15:10:00
15:15:00
15:20:00
15:25:00
15:30:00
15:35:00
15:40:00
15:45:00
15:50:00
15:55:00
16:00:00
16:05:00
16:10:00
16:15:00
16:20:00
16:25:00
16:30:00
16:35:00
16:40:00
16:45:00
16:50:00
16:55:00
17:00:00
>>>

Answer 2

Try:

# import modules
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

# Create starting and end datetime object from string
start = datetime.strptime("07:00:00", "%H:%M:%S")
end = datetime.strptime("17:00:00", "%H:%M:%S")

# min_gap
min_gap = 5

# compute datetime interval
arr = [(start + timedelta(hours=min_gap*i/60)).strftime("%H:%M:%S")
       for i in range(int((end-start).total_seconds() / 60.0 / min_gap))]
print(arr)
# ['07:00:00', '07:05:00', '07:10:00', '07:15:00', '07:20:00', '07:25:00', '07:30:00', ..., '16:55:00']

Explanations:

1. First, you need to convert string date to datetime object. The strptime does it!
2. Then, we will find the number of minutes between the starting date and the ending datetime. This discussion solved it! We can do it like this :

(end-start).total_seconds() / 60.0

However, in our case, we only want to iterate every n minutes. So, in our loop, we need to divide it by n.

Also, as we will iterate over this number of minutes, we need to convertit to int for the for loop. That results in:

int((end-start).total_seconds() / 60.0 / min_gap)

3. Then, on each element of our loop, we will add the number of minutes to the initial datetime. The tiemdelta function has been designed for. As parameter, we specify the number of hours we want to add : min_gap*i/60.

4. Finally, we convert this datetime object back to a string object using the strftime.