Convert duration to hours:minutes:seconds (or similar) in Rails 3 or Ruby

Question

I have a feeling there is a simple/built-in way to do this but I can\'t find it.

I have a duration (in seconds) in an integer and I want to display it in a friendly form

Answer 1

I use this to show time durations in my Rails Project:

1. Add a custom method to the Integer class. You can create a new file called pretty_duration.rb in the initializers folder:

   class Integer
       def pretty_duration
           parse_string = 
               if self < 3600
                   '%M:%S'
               else
                   '%H:%M:%S'
               end
   
           Time.at(self).utc.strftime(parse_string)
       end
   end
   

2. Call seconds.pretty_duration anywhere in your project:

   275.pretty_duration     # => "04:35"
   9823.pretty_duration    # => "02:43:43"
   

---

This answer builds up on Lev Lukomsky's Code

Answer 2

Using Time.utc.strftime works only for values when total number of hours is less then 24:

2.2.2 :004 > Time.at(60 * 60).utc.strftime('%H h %M m')
=> "01 h 00 m"

For greater values it returns incorrect results:

2.2.2 :006 > Time.at(60 * 60 * 24).utc.strftime('%H h %M m')
 => "00 h 00 m"

I suggest using the simplest method I found for this problem:

  def formatted_duration total_seconds
    hours = total_seconds / (60 * 60)
    minutes = (total_seconds / 60) % 60
    seconds = total_seconds % 60
    "#{ hours } h #{ minutes } m #{ seconds } s"
  end

You can always adjust returned value to your needs.

Answer 3

An answer inspired from Lev Lukomsky's one taking advantage of ActiveSupport::Duration, and handling milliseconds (useful to benchmark code)

# duration in ms modulus number of ms in one second
milliseconds = duration.in_milliseconds % 1.second.in_milliseconds

# duration in seconds modulus number of seconds in one minute
seconds = (duration / 1.second) % (1.minute / 1.second)

# duration in minutes modulus number of minutes in one hour
minutes = (duration / 1.minute) % (1.hour / 1.minute)

# duration in hours modulus number of hours in one day
hours = (duration / 1.hour) % (1.day / 1.hour)

format("%02d:%02d:%02d:%03d", hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds) #=> "12:05:00:001"

Of course you can extend this easily with days, months, years, etc using related ActiveSupport methods and repeating the same structure.

Keep in mind that for too long durations, this may be inaccurate since the duration of 1 month is not fixed in number of days, and I'm not sure how AS:Duration deals with that.

Answer 4

Just to throw in my 2 cents:

Time.at(i).utc.strftime((i < 3600) ? '%-M minutes and %-S seconds' : '%-H hours, %-M minutes, and %-S seconds')

Built off of Xiao Bin's answer.

Answer 5

Be careful with the duration longer than one day.

(timing/3600).to_i.to_s.rjust(2,'0') + ":"+Time.at(timing).utc.strftime("%M:%S")

Answer 6

Summing up:

assuming that total_seconds = 3600

Option 1:

distance_of_time_in_words(total_seconds) #=> "about 1 hour"

Option 2:

Time.at(total_seconds).utc.strftime("%H:%M:%S") #=> "01:00:00"

Option 3:

seconds = total_seconds % 60
minutes = (total_seconds / 60) % 60
hours = total_seconds / (60 * 60)

format("%02d:%02d:%02d", hours, minutes, seconds) #=> "01:00:00"

use Option1 if you want words, Option2 if you want H:M:S format, Option3 if you want H:M:S format and there can be more than 24 hours