Find big enough gaps in booking table - mysql

Question

A rental system uses a booking table to store all bookings and reservations:
booking | item | startdate | enddate
1 | 42 | 2013-10-25 16:00 | 2013-10-27 12:00
2 | 42 | 2013-10-27 14:00 | 2013-10-28 18:00
3 | 42 | 2013-10-30 09:00 | 2013-11-01 09:00
…
Let’s say a user wants to rent item 42 from 2013-10-27 12:00 until 2013-10-28 12:00 which is a period of one day. The system will tell him, that the item is not available in the given time frame, since booking no. 2 collides.
Now I want to suggest the earliest rental date and time when the selected item is available again. Of course considering the user’s requested period (1 day) beginning with the user’s desired date and time.
So in the case above, I’m looking for an SQL query that returns 2013-10-28 18:00, since the earliest date since 2013-10-27 12:00 at which item 42 will be available for 1 day, is from 2013-10-28 18:00 until 2013-10-29 18:00.
So I need to to find a gap between bookings, that is big enough to hold the user’s reservation and that is as close a possible to the desired start date.
Or in other words: I need to find the first booking for a given item, after which there’s enough free time to place the user’s booking.
Is this possible in plain SQL without having to iterate over every booking and its successor?

Answer 1

If you can't redesign your database to use something more efficient, this will get the answer. You'll obviously want to parameterize it. It says find either the desired date, or the earliest end date where the hire interval doesn't overlap an existing booking:
Select
min(startdate)
From (
select
cast('2013-10-27 12:00' as datetime) startdate
from
dual
union all
select
enddate
from
booking
where
enddate > cast('2013-10-27 12:00' as datetime) and
item = 42
) b1
Where
not exists (
select
'x'
from
booking b2
where
item = 42 and
b1.startdate < b2.enddate and
b2.startdate < date_add(b1.startdate, interval 24 hour)
);
Example Fiddle

Answer 2

SELECT startfree,secondsfree FROM (
SELECT
#lastenddate AS startfree,
UNIX_TIMESTAMP(startdate)-UNIX_TIMESTAMP(#lastenddate) AS secondsfree,
#lastenddate:=enddate AS ignoreme
FROM
(SELECT startdate,enddate FROM bookings WHERE item=42) AS schedule,
(SELECT #lastenddate:=NOW()) AS init
ORDER BY startdate
) AS baseview
WHERE startfree>='2013-10-27 12:00:00'
AND secondsfree>=86400
ORDER BY startfree
LIMIT 1
;
Some explanation: The inner query uses a variable to move the iteration into SQL, the outer query finds the needed row.
That said, I would not do this in SQL, if the DB structure is like the given. You could reduce the iteration count by using some smort WHERE in the inner query to a sane timespan, but chances are, this won't perform well.
EDIT
A caveat: I did not check, but I assume, this won't work, if there are no prior reservations in the list - this should not be a problem, as in this case your first reservation attempt (original time) will work.
EDIT
SQLfiddle

Answer 3

Searching for overlapping date ranges generally yields poor performance in SQL. For that reason having a "Calendar" of available slots often makes things a lot more efficient.
For example, the booking 2013-10-25 16:00 => 2013-10-27 12:00 would actually be represented by 44 records, each one hour long.
The "gap" until the next booking at 2013-10-27 14:00 would then be represented by 2 records, each one hours long.
Then, each record could also have the duration (in time, or number of slots) until the next change.
slot_start_time | booking | item | remaining_duration
------------------+---------+------+--------------------
2013-10-27 10:00 | 1 | 42 | 2
2013-10-27 11:00 | 1 | 42 | 1
2013-10-27 12:00 | NULL | 42 | 2
2013-10-27 13:00 | NULL | 42 | 1
2013-10-27 14:00 | 2 | 42 | 28
2013-10-27 15:00 | 2 | 42 | 27
... | ... | ... | ...
2013-10-28 17:00 | 2 | 42 | 1
2013-10-28 18:00 | NULL | 42 | 39
2013-10-28 19:00 | NULL | 42 | 38
Then your query just becomes:
SELECT
*
FROM
slots
WHERE
slot_start_time >= '2013-10-27 12:00'
AND remaining_duration >= 24
AND booking IS NULL
ORDER BY
slot_start_time ASC
LIMIT
1

Answer 4

OK this isn't pretty in MySQL. That's because we have to fake rownum values in subqueries.
The basic approach is to join the appropriate subset of the booking table to itself offset by one.
Here's the basic list of reservations for item 42, ordered by reservation time. We can't order by booking_id, because those aren't guaranteed to be in order of reservation time. (You're trying to insert a new reservation between two existing ones, eh?) http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/62383/9/0
SELECT #aserial := #aserial+1 AS rownum,
booking.*
FROM booking,
(SELECT #aserial:= 0) AS q
WHERE item = 42
ORDER BY startdate, enddate
Here is that subset joined to itself. The trick is the a.rownum+1 = b.rownum, which joins each row to the one that comes right after it in the booking table subset. http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/62383/8/0
SELECT a.booking_id, a.startdate asta, a.enddate aend,
b.startdate bsta, b.enddate bend
FROM (
SELECT #aserial := #aserial+1 AS rownum,
booking.*
FROM booking,
(SELECT #aserial:= 0) AS q
WHERE item = 42
ORDER BY startdate, enddate
) AS a
JOIN (
SELECT #bserial := #bserial+1 AS rownum,
booking.*
FROM booking,
(SELECT #bserial:= 0) AS q
WHERE item = 42
ORDER BY startdate, enddate
) AS b ON a.rownum+1 = b.rownum
Here it is again, showing each reservation (except the last one) and the number of hours following it. http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/62383/15/0
SELECT a.booking_id, a.startdate, a.enddate,
TIMESTAMPDIFF(HOUR, a.enddate, b.startdate) gaphours
FROM (
SELECT #aserial := #aserial+1 AS rownum,
booking.*
FROM booking,
(SELECT #aserial:= 0) AS q
WHERE item = 42
ORDER BY startdate, enddate
) AS a
JOIN (
SELECT #bserial := #bserial+1 AS rownum,
booking.*
FROM booking,
(SELECT #bserial:= 0) AS q
WHERE item = 42
ORDER BY startdate, enddate
) AS b ON a.rownum+1 = b.rownum
So, if you're looking for the starting time and ending time of the earliest twelve-hour slot you can use that result set to do this: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/62383/18/0
SELECT MIN(enddate) startdate, MIN(enddate) + INTERVAL 12 HOUR as enddate
FROM (
SELECT a.booking_id, a.startdate, a.enddate,
TIMESTAMPDIFF(HOUR, a.enddate, b.startdate) gaphours
FROM (
SELECT #aserial := #aserial+1 AS rownum,
booking.*
FROM booking,
(SELECT #aserial:= 0) AS q
WHERE item = 42
ORDER BY startdate, enddate
) AS a
JOIN (
SELECT #bserial := #bserial+1 AS rownum,
booking.*
FROM booking,
(SELECT #bserial:= 0) AS q
WHERE item = 42
ORDER BY startdate, enddate
) AS b ON a.rownum+1 = b.rownum
) AS gaps
WHERE gaphours >= 12

Answer 5

here is the query, it will return needed date, obvious condition - there should be some bookings in table, but as I see from question - you do this check:
SELECT min(enddate)
FROM
(
select a.enddate from table4 as a
where
a.item=42
and
DATE_ADD(a.enddate, INTERVAL 1 day) <= ifnull(
(select min(b.startdate)
from table4 as b where b.startdate>=a.enddate and a.item=b.item),
a.enddate)
and
a.enddate>=now()
union all
select greatest(ifnull(max(enddate), now()),now()) from table4
) as q
you change change INTERVAL 1 day to INTERVAL ### hour

Answer 6

If I have understood your requirements correctly, you could try self-JOINing book with itself, to get the "empty" spaces, and then fit. This is MySQL only (I believe it can be adapted to others - certainly PostgreSQL):
SELECT book.*, TIMESTAMPDIFF(MINUTE, book.enddate, book.best) AS width FROM
(
SELECT book.*, MIN(book1.startdate) AS best
FROM book
JOIN book AS book1 USING (item)
WHERE item = 42 AND book1.startdate >= book.enddate
GROUP BY book.booking
) AS book HAVING width > 110 ORDER BY startdate LIMIT 1;
In the above example, "110" is the looked-for minimum width in minutes.
Same thing, a bit less readable (for me), a SELECT removed (very fast SELECT, so little advantage):
SELECT book.*, MIN(book1.startdate) AS best
FROM book
JOIN book AS book1 ON (book.item = book1.item AND book.item = 42)
WHERE book1.startdate >= book.enddate
GROUP BY book.booking
HAVING TIMESTAMPDIFF(MINUTE, book.enddate, best) > 110
ORDER BY startdate LIMIT 1;
In your case, one day is 1440 minutes and
SELECT book.*, MIN(book1.startdate) AS best FROM book JOIN book AS book1 ON (book.item = book1.item AND book.item = 42) WHERE book1.startdate >= book.enddate GROUP BY book.booking HAVING TIMESTAMPDIFF(MINUTE, book.enddate, best) >= 1440 ORDER BY startdate LIMIT 1;
+---------+------+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| booking | item | startdate | enddate | best |
+---------+------+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| 2 | 42 | 2013-10-27 14:00:00 | 2013-10-28 18:00:00 | 2013-10-30 09:00:00 |
+---------+------+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
...the period returned is 2, i.e., at the end of booking 2, and until "best" which is booking 3, a period of at least 1440 minutes is available.
An issue could be that if no periods are available, the query returns nothing -- then you need another query to fetch the farthest enddate. You can do this with an UNION and LIMIT 1 of course, but I think it would be best to only run the 'recovery' query on demand, programmatically (i.e. if empty(query) then new_query...).
Also, in the inner WHERE you should add a check for NOW() to avoid dates in the past. If expired bookings are moved to inactive storage, this could be unnecessary.