PHP - How do I get duration from timestamp? - php

Question

So I have an array of podcast lengths in 30:13 (minutes:seconds) format that I want to first convert to a valid UNIX timestamp and second to format this timestamp into something readable like "30 mins 13s".
My convert to timestamp function looks like this:
public function duration($str) {
$a = explode(':', $str);
$v = (($a[0]*60)+$a[1]);
return $v;
}
The problem comes in when I try to format this with date('H:i:s', $v) which produces numbers like "17:35:50" when there is no way in hell the podcast is 17 hours long. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

UNIX timestamps are not meant for calculating durations, they represent a specific time as seconds since the epoch (beginning of the year 1970). If you pass a very low value to functions such as date() that expect a timestamp, you will get a date from the early 1970's. You'll have to do the time formatting manually.
Edit: Note that if you lived in the GMT timezone you would get the results you expected. This is because date() takes into account your current timezone when calculating the dates generated from timestamps.

Answer 2

Just format it to readable string.
$duration = '30:13';
list($min, $sec) = explode(':', $duration);
echo "{$min}mins {$sec}s"; // 30mins 13s

Answer 3

This should do the job you want. Timestamps are something differnt, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timestamp
// $str has the format 'mm:ss'
public function duration($str) {
list($min, $sec) = explode(':', $str);
return $min . ' mins ' . $sec . ' sec';
}

Answer 4

Use Simple Regex
function duration($str)
{
return preg_replace('/^([0-9]{2})\:([0-9]{2}$)/', '$1 mins $2s', $str);
}
echo duration("30:33");
OUTPUT
30 mins 33s
Hope this helps you. Thanks!!

Answer 5

you can try for hh:mm:ss
list($hours,$mins,$secs) = explode(':', $yourtime);
echo $hours.' hours '.$mins .'minuts'. $secs .'seconds';
may this work

Answer 6

Unix timestamp gives you the amount of seconds passed from January 1 1970 00:00:00, but not time period.
To achieve your task I'd do:
$str = '30:13';
function duration($str) {
$a = explode(':', $str);
$hours = floor($a[0] / 60);
$minutes = $a[0] - $hours * 60;
$seconds = $a[1];
$result = '';
if($hours) {
$result .= "$hours hours ";
}
if($minutes) {
$result .= "$minutes minutes ";
}
return "$result$seconds seconds";
}
var_dump(duration($str));

Answer 7

You can use a DateInterval object.
function getInterval($durationString) {
$parts = explode(':', $durationString);
$min = $parts[0];
$sec = $parts[1];
$interval = new DateInterval("PT{$min}M{$sec}S");
return $interval;
}
$interval = getInterval('30:12');
echo $interval->format('%imins %ss');
I'm assuming you're using a duration time format with only minutes and seconds, of course you can modify the code if you need also hours.