How to convert milliseconds to "hh:mm:ss" format?

Question

You were really close:

String.format("%02d:%02d:%02d", 
TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toHours(millis),
TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(millis) -  
TimeUnit.HOURS.toMinutes(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toHours(millis)), // The change is in this line
TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toSeconds(millis) - 
TimeUnit.MINUTES.toSeconds(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(millis)));   

You were converting hours to millisseconds using minutes instead of hours.

BTW, I like your use of the TimeUnit API :)

Here's some test code:

public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
    long millis = 3600000;
    String hms = String.format("%02d:%02d:%02d", TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toHours(millis),
            TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(millis) - TimeUnit.HOURS.toMinutes(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toHours(millis)),
            TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toSeconds(millis) - TimeUnit.MINUTES.toSeconds(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(millis)));
    System.out.println(hms);
}

Output:

01:00:00

---

I realised that my code above can be greatly simplified by using a modulus division instead of subtraction:

String hms = String.format("%02d:%02d:%02d", TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toHours(millis),
    TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(millis) % TimeUnit.HOURS.toMinutes(1),
    TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toSeconds(millis) % TimeUnit.MINUTES.toSeconds(1));

Still using the TimeUnit API for all magic values, and gives exactly the same output.

The generic method for this is fairly simple:

public static String convertSecondsToHMmSs(long seconds) {
    long s = seconds % 60;
    long m = (seconds / 60) % 60;
    long h = (seconds / (60 * 60)) % 24;
    return String.format("%d:%02d:%02d", h,m,s);
}

If you are using apache commons:

DurationFormatUtils.formatDuration(timeInMS, "HH:mm:ss,SSS");

I used this:

String.format("%1$tH:%1$tM:%1$tS.%1$tL", millis);

See description of class Formatter.

See runnable example using input of 2400 ms.

// New date object from millis
Date date = new Date(millis);
// formattter 
SimpleDateFormat formatter= new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss.SSS");
formatter.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
// Pass date object
String formatted = formatter.format(date );

See runnable example using input of 1200 ms.