Handling durations of format "hh:mm:ss" (sum of time attributes)

acea

I have a CSV data set with time attributes ("hh:mm:ss") in it, eg. attribute time1= "01:23:45" and time2 = "01:01:01"
I want to use GenerateAttribute (or some other Operator/Process) to calculate e.g. SumOfTime1AndTime2 (sholud be 02:24:46 in the example ).
How to to that?

I found that I can't simply add attributes of type time in GenerateAttribute. Then I have tried out several operator chains (NominalToDate (time), DateToNumeric and than GenerateAttribute and back to date..).
But nothing seems to work, because time seems to be handled internally as a date value.
Any ideas?

Here is an example which does not work:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<process version="5.3.013">
  <context>
    <input/>
    <output/>
    <macros/>
  </context>
  <operator activated="true" class="process" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" name="Process">
    <process expanded="true">
      <operator activated="true" class="generate_data_user_specification" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="60" name="Generate Data by User Specification" width="90" x="45" y="120">
        <list key="attribute_values">
          <parameter key="time1" value="&quot;02:34:56&quot;"/>
          <parameter key="time2" value="&quot;01:01:01&quot;"/>
        </list>
        <list key="set_additional_roles"/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="nominal_to_date" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Nominal to Date" width="90" x="179" y="120">
        <parameter key="attribute_name" value="time1"/>
        <parameter key="date_type" value="time"/>
        <parameter key="date_format" value="hh:mm:ss"/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="nominal_to_date" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Nominal to Date (2)" width="90" x="313" y="120">
        <parameter key="attribute_name" value="time2"/>
        <parameter key="date_type" value="time"/>
        <parameter key="date_format" value="hh:mm:ss"/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="date_to_numerical" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Date to Numerical" width="90" x="447" y="120">
        <parameter key="attribute_name" value="time1"/>
        <parameter key="millisecond_relative_to" value="epoch"/>
        <parameter key="keep_old_attribute" value="true"/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="date_to_numerical" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Date to Numerical (2)" width="90" x="581" y="120">
        <parameter key="attribute_name" value="time2"/>
        <parameter key="millisecond_relative_to" value="epoch"/>
        <parameter key="keep_old_attribute" value="true"/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="generate_attributes" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Generate Attributes" width="90" x="45" y="255">
        <list key="function_descriptions">
          <parameter key="SumOfBoth" value="time1_millisecond+time2_millisecond"/>
        </list>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="numerical_to_date" compatibility="5.3.013" expanded="true" height="76" name="Numerical to Date" width="90" x="179" y="255">
        <parameter key="attribute_name" value="SumOfBoth"/>
      </operator>
      <connect from_op="Generate Data by User Specification" from_port="output" to_op="Nominal to Date" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Nominal to Date" from_port="example set output" to_op="Nominal to Date (2)" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Nominal to Date (2)" from_port="example set output" to_op="Date to Numerical" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Date to Numerical" from_port="example set output" to_op="Date to Numerical (2)" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Date to Numerical (2)" from_port="example set output" to_op="Generate Attributes" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Generate Attributes" from_port="example set output" to_op="Numerical to Date" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Numerical to Date" from_port="example set output" to_port="result 1"/>
      <portSpacing port="source_input 1" spacing="0"/>
      <portSpacing port="sink_result 1" spacing="0"/>
      <portSpacing port="sink_result 2" spacing="0"/>
    </process>
  </operator>
</process>
[ /code]

acea

Allright, it seems there is no better answer than the one I "found": preprocessing the CSV data in Excel manually.
It would be nice though if future versions of Rapidminer would support simple arithmetics for time values.

awchisholm

Hello

Within the Generate Attributes operator, there are many date and time functions that can be used. You could use date_parse to convert a time in milliseconds to a date and time - there's an example here http://rapidminernotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/converting-unix-timestamps-in.html.

For the process you provided, you also need to change the data type to be date_time in the Nominal to Date operators - there seems to be an oddness (dare I say, a feature) in this function when using time as the type that adds an extra month to the unix timestamp.

regards

Andrew