--- title: [RFC] Duration class | daily.dev description: Tim Düsterhus and Derick are proposing a new `Time\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch/egg-timer style durations, primarily to improve the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-guidld0hx 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 are proposing a new `Time\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch/egg-timer style durations, primarily to improve the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-guidld0hx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/guIDld0hx.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)** · 10 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Tim Düsterhus and Derick are proposing a new `Time\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch/egg-timer 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). Key design decisions discussed include: the highest constructor unit being hours, omitting ISO 8601 serialization for now due to ambiguity, excluding floating-point conversion methods to avoid precision/rounding issues, and using the `Time` namespace (consistent with Rust, Java, and Go conventions). Community feedback raises questions about ISO 8601 format naming, floating-point total methods, and whether the JavaScript Temporal API's `temporal_rs` library should be considered instead. ## 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-c8sinqz7q) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-i7kxexek8) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-lygviitcy) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-fkcjzyugw) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [\[RFC\] Duration class](https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-kajpdzdqe) · 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-guidld0hx) ```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-guidld0hx","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rfc-duration-class-guidld0hx"},"datePublished":"2026-06-18T20:45:00.551Z","dateModified":"2026-06-18T20:45:26.046Z","description":"Tim Düsterhus and Derick are proposing a new `Time\\Duration` class for PHP 8.6 to represent stopwatch/egg-timer style durations, primarily to improve the...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--P4t4XyoV--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2001","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--P4t4XyoV--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2001","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-guidld0hx","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"architecture,php","timeRequired":"PT10M"} {"@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"}]} ```