I've always wondered why a function like this isn't a built-in part of PHP, as it seems to have a lot of other useful stuff for dealing with timestamps, but this does the job perfectly well.
Usage is straightforward: pass in a number of seconds, and you'll get a string back along the lines of "1:01:23". If you want a leading zero for less than 10 hours, pass "true" in as the second parameter.
function sec2hms ($sec, $padHours = false)
{
// holds formatted string
$hms = "";
// there are 3600 seconds in an hour, so if we
// divide total seconds by 3600 and throw away
// the remainder, we've got the number of hours
$hours = intval(intval($sec) / 3600);
// add to $hms, with a leading 0 if asked for
$hms .= ($padHours)
? str_pad($hours, 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT). ':'
: $hours. ':';
// dividing the total seconds by 60 will give us
// the number of minutes, but we're interested in
// minutes past the hour: to get that, we need to
// divide by 60 again and keep the remainder
$minutes = intval(($sec / 60) % 60);
// then add to $hms (with a leading 0 if needed)
$hms .= str_pad($minutes, 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT). ':';
// seconds are simple - just divide the total
// seconds by 60 and keep the remainder
$seconds = intval($sec % 60);
// add to $hms, again with a leading 0 if needed
$hms .= str_pad($seconds, 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);
// done!
return $hms;
}
?>
