title: What is the way to store "Time only" values with php?
body: <p>I have a Mysql table which has a column <strong>of type TIME</strong>.</p>
  
  <p><strong>When I retrieve the values of this TIME column with PHP, how should I store it in php variable for later use in my php classes?</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Should I keep it as string : "12:45:23"?</li>
  <li>Should I convert it to a fraction of a day : 0.25 is 06:00:00 ?</li>
  <li>Should I convert it to a number of seconds : 15152 is 04:12:32 ?</li>
  <li>other?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I would like to use the standard php 5 way of dealing with time.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>UPDATE</strong></p>
  
  <p>My data is stored in a mysql table of type "TIME" and not "DATETIME".</p>
  
  <p>I just want to deal with <strong>time</strong> (a number of hours, minutes and seconds). the date is NOT relevant in my case, so <strong>unix timestamp</strong> or date/time objects seems to not be appropriate.</p>