PHP convert decimal into fraction and back?

Question

I want the user to be able to type in a fraction like:

 1/2
 2 1/4
 3

And convert it into its corresponding decimal, to be saved in MySQL,

Answer 1

Sometimes you need to find a way to do it and rounding is acceptable. So if you decide what range of rounding works out for you you can build a function like this. To convert a decimal into the fraction that it most closely matches. You can extend the accuracy by adding more denominators to be tested.

function decToFraction($float) {
    // 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/3 ,2/3, 3/4, 3/8, 5/8, 7/8, 3/16, 5/16, 7/16,
    // 9/16, 11/16, 13/16, 15/16
    $whole = floor ( $float );
    $decimal = $float - $whole;
    $leastCommonDenom = 48; // 16 * 3;
    $denominators = array (2, 3, 4, 8, 16, 24, 48 );
    $roundedDecimal = round ( $decimal * $leastCommonDenom ) / $leastCommonDenom;
    if ($roundedDecimal == 0)
        return $whole;
    if ($roundedDecimal == 1)
        return $whole + 1;
    foreach ( $denominators as $d ) {
        if ($roundedDecimal * $d == floor ( $roundedDecimal * $d )) {
            $denom = $d;
            break;
        }
    }
    return ($whole == 0 ? '' : $whole) . " " . ($roundedDecimal * $denom) . "/" . $denom;
}