Get the length of an audio file php

If you're using linux / unix and have ffmpeg installed, just do this:

$time = exec("ffmpeg -i " . escapeshellarg($path) . " 2>&1 | grep 'Duration' | cut -d ' ' -f 4 | sed s/,//");
list($hms, $milli) = explode('.', $time);
list($hours, $minutes, $seconds) = explode(':', $hms);
$total_seconds = ($hours * 3600) + ($minutes * 60) + $seconds;

PHP has no standard audio support, you'll have to recompile PHP yourself, or you can use a tool to get the information:

You could use ffmpeg. Running ffmpeg as follows:

ffmpeg -i someAudio.mp3

will produce this output:

Input #0, mp3, from 'someAudio.mp3':
  Duration: 00:00:34.03, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 127 kb/s
    Stream #0.0: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, mono, s16, 128 kb/s

now you'll only need a regexp to parse the result.

What kind of audio file? mp3? wav? Anyway you will probably need some specific library. See: http://de.php.net/manual/en/refs.utilspec.audio.php

An improvement of Stephen Fuhry's answer:

/**
 * https://stackoverflow.com/a/7135484/470749
 * @param string $path
 * @return int
 */
function getDurationOfWavInMs($path) {
    $time = getDurationOfWav($path);
    list($hms, $milli) = explode('.', $time);
    list($hours, $minutes, $seconds) = explode(':', $hms);
    $totalSeconds = ($hours * 3600) + ($minutes * 60) + $seconds;
    return ($totalSeconds * 1000) + $milli;
}

/**
 * 
 * @param string $path
 * @return string
 */
function getDurationOfWav($path) {
    $cmd = "ffmpeg -i " . escapeshellarg($path) . " 2>&1 | grep 'Duration' | cut -d ' ' -f 4 | sed s/,//";
    return exec($cmd);
}

Thanks, Stephen! This is working well for me (although it is slow for hundreds of files).