Trouble understanding the time() function. Plz help!

Paul_help_

Hi guys.

I am having trouble understanding the below code:

<?php
if ( !isset( $_COOKIE["firstVisitTime"] ) ) {
setcookie( "firstVisitTime", time(), time() + 60 * 60 * 24 * 365, "/", "" );
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Remembering the first visit with cookies</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="common.css" />
</head>
<body>
<h2>Remembering the first visit with cookies</h2>
<?php if ( isset( $_COOKIE["firstVisitTime"] ) ) {
$elapsedTime = time() - $_COOKIE["firstVisitTime"];
$elapsedTimeMinutes = (int) ( $elapsedTime / 60 );
$elapsedTimeSeconds = $elapsedTime % 60;
?>
<p>Hi there! You first visited this page <?php echo $elapsedTimeMinutes ?>
 minute<?php echo $elapsedTimeMinutes != 1 ? "s" : "" ?> and <?php echo
$elapsedTimeSeconds ?> second<?php echo $elapsedTimeSeconds != 1 ? "s" : "" ?>
 ago.</p>
<?php } else { ?>
<p>It’s your first visit! Welcome!</p>
<?php } 
?>

I understand most of this.

But the only thing I don't understand is how the two following lines give us the time elapsed in minutes and seconds:

$elapsedTimeMinutes = (int) ( $elapsedTime / 60 );
$elapsedTimeSeconds = $elapsedTime % 60;

To be more specific, I do not understand how:

1) dividing the elapsed time by 60 will give us the elapsed minutes?
2) and how "$elapsedTime modulus 60" gives us the seconds?

Paul.

NogDog

since time() returns a number of seconds, dividing by 60 seconds/minute will give you the number of minutes. Casting it to (int) will drop the fractional amount. The "%" operator is the modulus or "remainder" operator, so it gives the remainder of that division by 60, which would be the number of seconds left over after extracting the minutes from that prior division operation.

Bonesnap

Paul help!;11051217 wrote:
1) dividing the elapsed time by 60 will give us the elapsed minutes?

Because there are 60 seconds in a minute if you divide it by 60 that is how many minutes there are. The (int) is casting it to an integer since you will actually get a double (a number with a decimal place). The casting simply chops off the end.

For example if you had 310 seconds and divide it by 60, you get 5.1666667, since it's slightly more than 5 minutes. With the casting you simply get 5.

Paul help!;11051217 wrote:
2) and how "$elapsedTime modulus 60" gives us the seconds?

The % operator will give you the remainder of the numbers divided (the part that doesn't divide evenly). If the numbers divide evenly then the result is 0, which is why you may see it when checking for even numbers in something like a for() loop (if the current number % 2 == 0 then you know it's an even number).

Let's use 310 seconds again as an example. 310 % 60 will give you 10, because there are 10 seconds remaining. Now you can combine both to get 5 minutes and 10 seconds.