How can PHP be used to convert time values from a time format to a decimal format for calculation purposes?

To convert time values from a time format to a decimal format for calculation purposes in PHP, you can use the strtotime function to convert the time string to a Unix timestamp, then divide it by the number of seconds in a day (86400) to get the decimal representation of the time.

$time = "08:30:00"; // Time value in HH:MM:SS format
$unixTime = strtotime($time);
$decimalTime = $unixTime / 86400;

echo $decimalTime; // Output: 0.35416666666667