Translating a PHP function that converts seconds to human readable string - php

Question

In this website I've found a function to convert seconds in an human readable format, like this:
3 weeks, 2 days, 1 hour, 27 minutes, 52 seconds
I want to translate it in italian, so I just translated array keys. The function now is this
function secondsToHumanReadable($secs) {
$units = array(
'settimane' => 604800,
'giorni' => 86400,
'ore' => 3600,
'minuti' => 60,
'secondi' => 1
);
foreach ( $units as &$unit ) {
$quot = intval($secs / $unit);
$secs -= $quot * $unit;
$unit = $quot;
}
return $units;
}
It works pretty well, but there's a little problem: in english all the plurals ends with one letter less, but unfortunately in italian it's not the same, as you can see below.
English Italian
- weeks, week - settimane, settimana
- days, day - giorni, giorno
- hours, hour - ore, ora
- minutes, minute - minuti, minuto
- seconds, second - secondi, secondo
I want to find a solution to print singular keys when the values are == 1.
I was thinking that I could merge the array with another array that have singular keys, using array_combine().
$singular_units = array(
'settimana',
'giorno',
'ora',
'minuto',
'secondo'
);
print_r(array_combine( $singular_units, $units ));
/* print_r:
Array
(
[settimana] => 604800
[giorno] => 86400
[ora] => 3600
[minuto] => 60
[secondo] => 1
)
*/
The array above is what I need, but I'm not able to use it, since I just cannot use another foreach.
$seconds = 12345*60; // just an example
$units = secondsToHumanReadable($seconds);
$time_string = '';
foreach ($units as $u => $v)
if (!empty($v))
$time_string.= $v.' '.$u.', ';
echo substr($time_string, 0, -2);
// 1 settimane, 1 giorni, 13 ore, 45 minuti
// this echo is not correct :( is expected to be like this:
// 1 settimana, 1 giorno, 13 ore, 45 minuti
How could I implement the singular words?
Any help is really appreciated! Thank you so much in advance!

Answer 1

You can implement them any way you like, IMHO preferably something not like the current solution which lacks clarity and readability (at least that's how the local-var-mutation-with-refs-and-variable-ping-pong looks like to me).
Just one possible solution:
$input = 12345 * 60;
$units = array(
604800 => array('settimana', 'settimane'),
86400 => array('giorno', 'giorni'),
// etc
);
$result = array();
foreach($units as $divisor => $unitName) {
$units = intval($input / $divisor);
if ($units) {
$input %= $divisor;
$name = $units == 1 ? $unitName[0] : $unitName[1];
$result[] = "$units $name";
}
}
echo implode(', ', $result);
See it in action.

Answer 2

Your probably want something like this?
function secondsToHumanReadable($secs) {
$units = array(
'settimane' => 604800,
'giorni' => 86400,
'ore' => 3600,
'minuti' => 60,
'secondi' => 1
);
foreach ( $units as $key => &$unit ) {
$this_unit = intval($secs / $unit);
$secs -= $this_unit * $unit;
if($this_unit == 1):
switch($key):
case "settimane":
$this_key = "settimana";
break;
case "giorni":
$this_key = "giorno";
break;
case "ore":
$this_key = "ora";
break;
case "minuti":
$this_key = "minuto";
break;
case "secondi":
$this_key = "secondo";
break;
endswitch;
else:
$this_key = $key;
endif;
$results[$this_key] = $this_unit;
}
return $results;
}
This will return the full array, not your initial one...with results...

Answer 3

Was also going to mention that some frameworks have Inflector classes which will determine the plural/singular version of a word, however I am not sure if they support languages such as Italian, but it may be worth a look. Personally I use CakePHP Inflector as it is a stand alone lib and I didn't need to bring in any other files.
CakePHP Inflector class
http://api.cakephp.org/class/inflector
Doctrine Inflector: http://www.doctrine-project.org/api/common/2.0/doctrine/common/util/inflector.html