I have
str_pad()
echo str_pad($input, 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);
sprintf()
echo sprintf("%02d", $input);
If it is coming from a DB, this is the way to do it on a sql query:
lpad(yourfield, (select length(max(yourfield)) FROM yourtable),'0') yourfield
This is will get the max value in the table and place the leading zeros.
If it's hardcoded (PHP), use str_pad()
str_pad($yourvar, $numberofzeros, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);
This is a small example of what I did on a online php compiler, and it works...
$string = "Tutorial 1 how to";
$number = explode(" ", $string); //Divides the string in a array
$number = $number[1]; //The number is in the position 1 in the array, so this will be number variable
$str = ""; //The final number
if($number<10) $str .= "0"; //If the number is below 10, it will add a leading zero
$str .= $number; //Then, add the number
$string = str_replace($number, $str, $string); //Then, replace the old number with the new one on the string
echo $string;