Get experiment timing information

Problem

You want to know when an experiment started and finished running.

Solution

The ExperimentData class contains timing information in the following attributes, which are all of type datetime.datetime and in your local timezone:

• ExperimentData.start_datetime is when the ExperimentData was instantiated, which is also when the experiment began running in the typical workflow by calling experiment_data = exp.run().

• ExperimentData.end_datetime is the time the most recently completed job was successfully added to the ExperimentData object. If a job was canceled, did not run successfully, or could not be added to the ExperimentData object for some other reason, ExperimentData.end_datetime will not update.

Discussion

ExperimentData.start_datetime can also be set to a custom timestamp when instantiating an ExperimentData object by passing a value to the start_datetime field.