I had a very difficult time working with dates and times when I first got started. Something that I now do is create time slots in my database
For me it has proven to be the easiest way to deal with dates and times…the “total_seconds” and “total_minutes” is something that allows me to do ranges and I can’t tell that it is faster or not than what you might be doing, but for me it is the alternative I’ve used.
It has also helped me with other things in terms of availability calendars, meeting schedules and saving dates with the correct time associated.
This is how I get them into my database relatively quickly
It is one alternative…other users probably do something different that works for them and I’m sure some experienced programmers/coders use something more sophisticated.