How to convert a string describing time into seconds?

Question

I'm trying to make a function to convert a time string (from the user) to seconds.

what I would like to do is to let the user input the time as a string, like:

"one hour and forty five minutes" 

and then break it down into seconds. So the output from the above will be

6300 seconds

Answer 1

If you want to do it from scratch then other answers are good. Here's what you can do without typing much:

You need to have word2number installed for this solution.

from word2number import w2n
import re
def strTimeToSec(s):
    s = s.replace(' and', '')
    time = re.split(' hour| hours| minute| minutes| second| seconds', s)[:-1]
    if not('hour' in s):
        time = ['zero']+time
    elif not('minute' in s):
        time = [time[0]]+['zero']+[time[1]]
    elif not('second' in s):
        time = time+['zero']
    time = [w2n.word_to_num(x) for x in time]
    out = time[0]*3600+time[1]*60+time[2]
    return str(out)+' seconds'

>>> print(strTimeToSec('one hour and forty five minute'))

6300 seconds

>>> print(strTimeToSec('one hour forty five minute and thirty three seconds'))

6333 seconds