Python Check if a Minute has passed

Question

Im running part of a script just once per minute and came up with this:

def minutePassed(oldminute):
    currentminute = time.gmtime()[4]

    if ((currentminute - oldminute) >= 1) or (oldminute == 59 and currentminute >= 0):
        return True
    else:
        return False

Problem here is that if the minute is 59 it runs everytime until its past that time - its not much of a bother performance wise for me. But I still dont like it happening!

I thought of something like this now:

def minutePassed(oldminute):
    currentminute = time.gmtime()[4]

    if ((currentminute - oldminute) >= 1) or (oldminute == 59 and currentminute >= 0 and ran == false):
        ran = True
        return True
    else:
        return False

Then on another part of the script I turn ran false again when the minute is != 59 and the variable isnt already false - but that seems crude?

On another note - is there any other way to check if a minute has passed? Maybe im making things complicated ...

Edit: Maybe I was not clear enough:

1. Run only ONCE per minute.
2. Execution time varies by many seconds but takes less then 30s.

Im looking at timedelta now.

Answer 1

Don't work with minutes like that; if the time is, for example, 00:00:59, your code will believe a minute has passed the very next second.

Instead, use something like time.time() , which returns seconds passed since the epoch:

def minute_passed(oldepoch):
    return time.time() - oldepoch >= 60

That can still be off by almost a second for the same reasons, but that's probably more acceptable.

Answer 2

You can use seconds since epoch to get the time in seconds so you don't have to worry about minutes wrapping around:

import time
oldtime = time.time()
# check
if time.time() - oldtime > 59:
    print "it's been a minute"

Answer 3

Use time.sleep :

from time import sleep

while True:
    # do something
    sleep(60)

Answer 4

I think you'll find it much easier to use the time() function in the time module, which returns the number of seconds elapsed since the 'epoch'.

import time

oldtime = time.time()

def minutePassed(oldtime):
    currenttime = time.time()
    if currenttime - oldtime > 60 and ran == False:
        ran = True
        return True
    else:
        return False

Answer 5

I had not much success with timedelta so I went with my former crude idea:

def minutePassed(oldminute):
    currentminute = time.gmtime()[4]

    if ((currentminute - oldminute) >= 1) or (oldminute == 59 and currentminute == 0):
        return True
    else:
        return False

Then in the script:

while True:
    dosomething()

    if minutePassed(time.gmtime(lastrun)[4]):
        domore
        lastrun = time.time()

This works perfectly fine for me now - only runs once a Minute - sleeping or anything is a bad choice for me here since the execution time on each loop is unreliable.

Answer 6

I had the exact same problem and I think I found a solution:

import time


oldtime = time.time()
print oldtime

while oldtime + 60 != time.time():

    if oldtime + 3 == time.time():
        print "60 secs passed"
        print time.time()
        break

You can delete the print statements, I had them there just to see if it works, hope it's what you are looking for.