--- title: [RFC] Duration class | daily.dev description: Tim Düsterhus and Derick Rethans have proposed a new `Time\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch-style durations, primarily to improve the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-3hqblesdz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: [RFC] Duration class | daily.dev og:description: Tim Düsterhus and Derick Rethans have proposed a new `Time\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch-style durations, primarily to improve the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-3hqblesdz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/3HqBleSDZ.png og:image:alt: [RFC] Duration class og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # [RFC] Duration class **[externals.io](https://daily.dev/sources/externals)** · 85 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Tim Düsterhus and Derick Rethans have proposed a new `Time\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch-style durations, primarily to improve the developer experience for timeout-related APIs including the new Polling API. The RFC is intentionally minimal, using a seconds+nanoseconds internal representation (similar to Rust's and Java's Duration). Community discussion covers design questions including: why the highest constructor unit is hours, the absence of an ISO 8601 serialization method (deferred to PHP 8.7), omission of floating-point total methods due to precision concerns, namespace choice (`Time` vs `DateTime`), and whether to use `add`/`sub` methods or a single variadic `sum` method. The authors also explain why they chose not to adopt the JavaScript Temporal API or the `temporal_rs` Rust library, citing PHP's semantic closeness to Java and the complexity of integrating Rust into the Zend Engine. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-1dqdrkj1d) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-k8bfexp3h) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-lajcku0k4) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-gil3vr6jm) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-jgktfwium) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#php](https://daily.dev/tags/php) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-3hqblesdz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"[RFC] Duration class","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-3hqblesdz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-3hqblesdz"},"datePublished":"2026-06-25T16:42:22.269Z","dateModified":"2026-06-25T17:34:20.465Z","description":"Tim Düsterhus and Derick Rethans have proposed a new `Time\\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch-style durations, primarily to improve the...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--2-1xRawN--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2011","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--2-1xRawN--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2011","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"externals.io","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"externals.io","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--9i0zxASK--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780213616/logos/externals?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/externals"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-3hqblesdz","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"architecture,php","timeRequired":"PT85M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"externals.io","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/externals"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"[RFC] Duration class"}]} ```