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 format.

e.g. 3600 would be displayed as "01:00:00" or "1 hour" or something.

I can do it with time_ago_in_words(Time.zone.now+3600) but that feels like a bit of a hack, there is no reason to add/subtract from the current time just to format this value. Is there a duration_in_words() or something?

Thanks

Answer 1

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