Hi. This sort of stuff always makes me wonder what it is I am missing. The users are asked to enter a buffer time in the format HH:MM This time will be added to the end of an event datetime to determine what the next available event will be for that user. The entered value is stored in the DB as a time type (so is returned as a string "HH:MM:SS"). Can I use anything in DateTime to handle this (I was thinking of DateTimeInterval but that doesn't want to deal with a simple time only string). My other option is to parse out the string into H, M and S and then construct that as a strtotime sort of thing. In general, this sort of parsing always suggests I've missed a trick/function/method. So, is there something I'm missing? Regards, Richard. -- Richard Quadling Twitter : @RQuadling EE : http://e-e.com/M_248814.html Zend : http://bit.ly/9O8vFY