Pretty print a time delta in Python in days, hours, minutes and seconds

1-python-pretty-time-delta.py

def pretty_time_delta(seconds):
    sign_string = '-' if seconds < 0 else ''
    seconds = abs(int(seconds))
    days, seconds = divmod(seconds, 86400)
    hours, seconds = divmod(seconds, 3600)
    minutes, seconds = divmod(seconds, 60)
    if days > 0:
        return '%s%dd%dh%dm%ds' % (sign_string, days, hours, minutes, seconds)
    elif hours > 0:
        return '%s%dh%dm%ds' % (sign_string, hours, minutes, seconds)
    elif minutes > 0:
        return '%s%dm%ds' % (sign_string, minutes, seconds)
    else:
        return '%s%ds' % (sign_string, seconds)

2-python-pretty-time-delta-positive-only.py

def pretty_time_delta(seconds):
    seconds = int(seconds)
    days, seconds = divmod(seconds, 86400)
    hours, seconds = divmod(seconds, 3600)
    minutes, seconds = divmod(seconds, 60)
    if days > 0:
        return '%dd%dh%dm%ds' % (days, hours, minutes, seconds)
    elif hours > 0:
        return '%dh%dm%ds' % (hours, minutes, seconds)
    elif minutes > 0:
        return '%dm%ds' % (minutes, seconds)
    else:
        return '%ds' % (seconds,)

README.md

I needed to print time deltas in a compact hours, minutes seconds format for log output. As an example try these on the Python console:

>>> pretty_time_delta(123)
'2m3s'
>>> pretty_time_delta(12345)
'3h25m45s'
>>> pretty_time_delta(1234567)
'14d6h56m7s'

It only displays to second precision and only displays up to hours as the largest unit. To convert a standard Python datetime.timedelta, use the total_seconds() method on your timedelta to convert to seconds. If all your calls come from standard Python datetime operations, you probably want to change line 3 to something like:

seconds = abs(int(seconds.total_seconds()))

The built-in string representation of a timedelta is also quite acceptable for most situations and also handles sub-second precision (see the last example):

>>> import datetime
>>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=123))
'0:02:03'
>>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=12345))
'3:25:45'
>>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=1234567))
'14 days, 6:56:07'
>>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=123.456789))
'0:02:03.456789'

The version included in python-pretty-time-delta-positive-only.py has the negative number handling stripped out for some slightly simpler code.

This is great! Your function should be implemented in datetime, for real!

Based on your code, I created a similar function for the timedelta object from datatime. Here it is, along with a simple example: https://gist.github.com/mikbuch/6678247656cd8eee6b70af9486db3f20