HackerRank Python Solution - Date and Time - Time Delta

• When users post an update on social media, such as a URL, image, status update, etc., other users in their network are able to view this new post on their news feed. Users can also see exactly when the post was published, i.e, how many hours, minutes, or seconds ago.

• Since sometimes posts are published and viewed in different time zones, this can be confusing. You are given two timestamps of one such post that a user can see on his newsfeed in the following format:

• Day dd Mon yyyy hh:mm:ss +xxxx

• Here +xxxx represents the time zone. Your task is to print the absolute difference (in seconds) between them.

Input Format: 

• The first line contains T, the number of test cases.

• Each test case contains 2 lines, representing time t₁ and t₂ time.

Constraints:

• Input contains only valid timestamps.

• year <= 3000

Output Format:

Print the absolute difference (t₁ - t₂) in seconds.

Sample Input:

2
Sun 10 May 2015 13:54:36 -0700
Sun 10 May 2015 13:54:36 -0000
Sat 02 May 2015 19:54:36 +0530
Fri 01 May 2015 13:54:36 -0000

Sample Output:

25200
88200

Explanation:

• In the first query, when we compare the time in UTC for both the timestamps, we see a difference of 7 hours. which is 7 x 3600 seconds or 25200 seconds.

• Similarly, in the second query, the time difference is 5 hours and 30 minutes for the time zone adjusting for that we have a difference of 1 day and 30 minutes. Or 24 x 3600 + 30 x 60 = 88200

Solution:

import math
import os
import random
import re
import sys

from datetime import datetime

# Complete the time_delta function below.
def time_delta(t1, t2):
    
    first = datetime.strptime(t1,'%a %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z')
    second = datetime.strptime(t2,'%a %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z')
    return str(abs(int((first-second).total_seconds())))
    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    fptr = open(os.environ['OUTPUT_PATH'], 'w')

    t = int(input())

    for t_itr in range(t):
        t1 = input()

        t2 = input()

        delta = time_delta(t1, t2)

        fptr.write(delta + '\n')

    fptr.close()

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