How to convert microtime() to HH:MM:SS:UU - php

Question

I was measuring some curl requests and I used microtime(true). The example output would be 3.1745569706
This is 3.1745569706 seconds. I want to convert that to a somewhat more readable format, let's say 00:00:03:17455 (HOURS:MINUTES:SECONDS:MILLISECONDS)
$maxWaitTime = '3.1745569706';
echo gmdate("H:i:s.u", $maxWaitTime);
// which returns
00:00:01.000000
echo date("H:i:s.u" , $maxWaitTime)
// which returns
18:00:01.000000
That looks wrong. I'm not quite sure what I'm missing here.
How do I convert microtime() to HH:MM:SS:UU ?

Answer 1

From the PHP.net article on date() which is similar to gmdate(), except that the time is returned in GMT:
Since this function only accepts integer timestamps the u format
character is only useful when using the date_format() function with
user based timestamps created with date_create().
Use something like this instead:
list($usec, $sec) = explode(' ', microtime()); //split the microtime on space
//with two tokens $usec and $sec
$usec = str_replace("0.", ".", $usec); //remove the leading '0.' from usec
print date('H:i:s', $sec) . $usec; //appends the decimal portion of seconds
Which prints: 00:00:03.1745569706
If you want you can use round() to round the $usec var even more.
If you use microtime(true) use this instead:
list($sec, $usec) = explode('.', microtime(true)); //split the microtime on .

Answer 2

<?php
function format_period($seconds_input)
{
$hours = (int)($minutes = (int)($seconds = (int)($milliseconds = (int)($seconds_input * 1000)) / 1000) / 60) / 60;
return $hours.':'.($minutes%60).':'.($seconds%60).(($milliseconds===0)?'':'.'.rtrim($milliseconds%1000, '0'));
}
echo format_period(3.1745569706);
OUTPUT
0:0:3.174

Answer 3

Assuming one really cares about microseconds, which is admittedly rare, then one should not use any representation that involves floats.
Instead use gettimeofday() which will return an associative array that contains the seconds and microseconds as integers.
$g1 = gettimeofday();
# execute your process here
$g2 = gettimeofday();
$borrow = $g2['usec'] < $g1['usec'] ;
$seconds = $g2['sec'] - $g1['sec'] - $borrow ;
$micros = $borrow*1000000 + $g2['usec'] - $g1['usec'] ;
$delta = gmdate( 'H:i:s.', $seconds ).sprintf( '%06d', $micros );