Get the correct date days passed after current date

Holiday

I faced with interesting problem
I'm trying to calculate days diff between current date and previous saved

Here is code
QDateTime oNow = QDateTime::currentDateTime();
QDateTime prev  = oNow.addDays(-50);
// Can't use daysTo() here because it counts how many 'midnights' there are between the two dates

qreal oTimeUnitsBefore = oNow.secsTo(prev) / (3600 * 24);

Result will be -49, because DST used.

Any thoughts how can I get a correct value?

JonB

@Holiday
Hi. I don't know what it is you actually wish to calculate. I don't know what you mean by "days"?! Once you deal in local times and Daylight hour changes the meaning of "day" becomes ambiguous. There are two obvious definitions for "day" (there are others, connected with the sun or The Universe!):

24 hours
The time/number of hours between a (local) wall-clock time-of-day one day and the same wall-clock time-of-day on another day.

The first, 24 hours, is nice and easy! The second is not: one "day" per year has 23 hours, another has 25 hours, one day per year has two "2:30AM" wall-clock times and another day per year has no "2:30AM" wall clock time at all!

You can only safely use the 3600 * 24 when you are talking about UTC, where every day has 24 hours. And that is what @mrjj's code is using. If you convert your local times to UTC and use that 24 hour division we know where we are.

If you want to use local times and allow the two dates to cross daylight saving boundaries I think you have to be very exact about what answer you are expecting/wanting.

KroMignon

@Holiday said in Get the correct date days passed after current date:

qreal oTimeUnitsBefore = oNow.secsTo(prev) / (3600 * 24);

==> this is wrong, you are dividing integer with integer, so the result will be an integer.

If you want result to be a qreal, you should do:

 qreal oTimeUnitsBefore = oNow.secsTo(prev) / (3600 * 24.0);

Holiday

Thanks for pointing that. But that's not the root cause and won't fix my problem

KroMignon

@Holiday said in Get the correct date days passed after current date:

Thanks for pointing that. But that's not the root cause and won't fix my problem

So I don't understand what your problem is.

My understanding was you've got -49, but you expected -50 days.

I am pretty sure qRound(oNow.secsTo(prev) / (3600 * 24.0)) will return -50.

Holiday

qRound yes, as it round value.

Ok, let's change this example to excape qreal value.

QDateTime zx = QDateTime::currentDateTime();
QDateTime cvb = oNow.addDays(-50);

int val = cvb.secsTo(zx) / (3600 * 24);

As I set up -50 days, I'm expecting, that val will be 50, but due DST I receiving 49, because I got 50 days in seconds - 2 hour (DST change)

P.S. And thanks for helping me with that

mrjj

Hi
So you want the class to ignore DST ?
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qt.html#TimeSpec-enum
("Neither UTC nor OffsetFromUTC has any transitions.")

    QDateTime oNow = QDateTime::currentDateTimeUtc();
    QDateTime cvb = oNow.addDays(-50);
    qint64  v1 = cvb.secsTo(oNow);
    qreal v2 = (3600 * 24);
    qreal v3 = v1 /  v2;
    qDebug() << v1 << "/" << v2 << "=" << v3;

4320000 / 86400 = 50

ps. Not sure this is what you want :)

Holiday

@mrjj Thanks, that's work!
But what if cvb will be the LocalTime value (as it reads from file from as string and converts to QDateTime with QDateTime::fromString() funct)? ToUtc() doesn't help in this case

auto withTZ =  QDateTime::currentDateTime();
auto current = QDateTime::currentDateTimeUtc();

QDateTime prev = withTZ.addDays(-50);
qint64  v1 = prev.toUTC().secsTo(current);
qreal v2 = (3600 * 24);
qreal v3 = v1 / v2;
qDebug() << v1 << "/" << v2 << "=" << v3;

JonB

@Holiday
Hi. I don't know what it is you actually wish to calculate. I don't know what you mean by "days"?! Once you deal in local times and Daylight hour changes the meaning of "day" becomes ambiguous. There are two obvious definitions for "day" (there are others, connected with the sun or The Universe!):

24 hours
The time/number of hours between a (local) wall-clock time-of-day one day and the same wall-clock time-of-day on another day.

The first, 24 hours, is nice and easy! The second is not: one "day" per year has 23 hours, another has 25 hours, one day per year has two "2:30AM" wall-clock times and another day per year has no "2:30AM" wall clock time at all!

You can only safely use the 3600 * 24 when you are talking about UTC, where every day has 24 hours. And that is what @mrjj's code is using. If you convert your local times to UTC and use that 24 hour division we know where we are.

If you want to use local times and allow the two dates to cross daylight saving boundaries I think you have to be very exact about what answer you are expecting/wanting.

Holiday

@JonB
Thanks for help. Yes, the main question in my problem was: what we mean by "days". 24 hour or days between midnight. When I found an answer on this question, I found a solution.
Huge thanks everyone for help!

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