Display humanized time output

Question

I am trying to display following message in one of my application to show the waiting time

2 hours, 3 mins and 4 s
1 hour and 2 s

As you can see there can be many variations and I am struggling to get this done. The following code works well is the given number of secs gives out non-zero hr, min and sec, but this is getting completed if I have to handle the case where only I have hours and secs to display and no minutes to display.

Also not sure where to add those string 'and' and the comma.

I believe there should be already a solution for this which I may not know.

public class HumanizedWaitDisplay {

public static void main(String[] args) {
    int noOfSecToWait = 60*60*2 + 30;
    System.out.println("Waiting for " + getHumanizedTime(noOfSecToWait));
}

private static String getHumanizedTime(int seconds) {
    String out ="";
    int hr = seconds/(60*60);
    seconds = seconds%(60*60);
    int min = seconds/(60);
    seconds = seconds%(60);

    if(hr>0) {
        out +=  hr + " hour" +(hr == 1 ? " ":"s ");
    }
    if(min > 0){
        out +=  min + " min" +(min == 1 ? " ":"s ");
    }
    if(seconds > 0){
        out +=  seconds + " s";
    }
    return out;
}
}

Let me know if you have come across such thing.

Answer 1

You can use the java date and time api. Brief example (using the method signature you provided at question body) :

static DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy"); //specifiy the 
//representation pattern. This is for example. You can construct it more accurate:
//display the hours, mins, secs, etc. Also you can specify your own delimiters. 
//See more at docs below

static { //upd: set the proper timezone
    dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
}

private static String getHumanizedTime(int seconds) {
    long timeInMillis = seconds * 1000; //Date object is designed for millis
    Date date = new Date(timeInMillis);
    return dateFormat.format(date);
}

Read more at javadocs : http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Date.html http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/DateFormat.html

Update : if you want the output to be something like "11 hours, 15 minutes and 34 seconds", try that :

static DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("HH 'hours,' mm 'minutes and' ss 'seconds'");

Answer 2

This will return results like you posted

2 hours, 3 mins and 4 s

1 hour and 2 s

Note that the comma ',' is only included when mins are not 0, so we must place it in the if test for min > 0. The "and" shows up only when the seconds are not 0, so we place that in the if test for seconds > 0.

    if(hr > 0) {
        out += hr + " hour" +(hr == 1 ? "":"s");
    }       
    if(min > 0){
        out += ", " + min + " min" +(min == 1 ? "":"s");
    }
    if(seconds > 0){
        out += " and " + seconds + " s";
    }
    return out;

Answer 3

Try this, this code could solve your problem

private static String getHumanizedTime(int seconds) {
String out ="";
int hr = seconds/(60*60);
seconds = seconds%(60*60);
int min = seconds/(60);
seconds = seconds%(60);

boolean htrue = false;
boolean mtrue = false;
if(hr>0) {
    out +=  hr + " hour" +(hr == 1 ? " ":"s ");
    htrue = true;
}
if(min > 0){
    if(htrue && seconds>0)
        out += ",";
    else if(seconds==0)
        out += "and";

    mtrue = true;
    out +=  min + " min" +(min == 1 ? " ":"s ");

}
if(seconds > 0){
    if(htrue || mtrue)
        out += "and ";
    out +=  seconds + " s";
}
return out;
}