Convert Seconds To Words

Convert Seconds To Words

Recently a script needed function to convert any amount of seconds into Days Hours Minutes Seconds. This is really just some simple math and out putting the string. Very handy if you need to use timers of any kind or have a UNIX TIMESTAMP to deal with. The function takes a unix timestamp and converts it to words.

The UNIX TIMESTAMP may be generated by the PHP strtotime() function or perhaps as a result from a database query. Wherever it comes from, this function will convert the unix timestamp seconds into words.


<?php 
    /*** start time ***/ 
    $start = strtotime('10:30 January 7 2004'); 
    /*** time now in seconds ***/ 
        $now = time(); 
    /*** do the math ***/ 
        $seconds = $now-$start; 

    /** 
     * 
     * @convert seconds to words 
     * 
     * @param INT $seconds 
     * 
     * @return string 
     * 
     */ 
        function secondsToWords($seconds) 
        { 
        /*** number of days ***/ 
                $days=(int)($seconds/86400); 
        /*** if more than one day ***/ 
        $plural = $days > 1 ? 'days' : 'day'; 
        /*** number of hours ***/ 
                $hours = (int)(($seconds-($days*86400))/3600); 
        /*** number of mins ***/ 
        $mins = (int)(($seconds-$days*86400-$hours*3600)/60); 
        /*** number of seconds ***/ 
        $secs = (int)($seconds - ($days*86400)-($hours*3600)-($mins*60)); 
        /*** return the string ***/ 
                return sprintf("%d $plural, %d hours, %d min, %d sec", $days, $hours, $mins, $secs); 
        } 

    /*** example usage ***/ 

    /*** start time ***/ 
    $start = strtotime('10:30 January 7 2004'); 
    /*** time now in seconds ***/ 
    $now = time(); 
    /*** do the math ***/ 
    $seconds = $now-$start; 

    /*** show the words ***/ 
    echo secondsToWords($seconds); 
?>