With the quite cryptic pack and unpack functions, it can be done in a one-liner:
function rawSingleHex($num) {
return strrev(unpack('h*', pack('f', $num))[1]);
}
This "packs" the number as its binary representation, then "unpacks" it in an array with one element: the binary representation in hexadecimal format. This format has the digits in the reversed order, so the function reverses that in the final result.
Call it by passing the floating point number:
echo rawSingleHex(5.6904566139035E-28);
Output:
12345678
Without pack/pack
(this was my original answer, but with the first option being available, this is not the advised way to proceed)
The binary format is explained in Wikipedia's article on the Single-precision floating-point format.
Here is a PHP function that implements the described procedure:
function rawSingleHex($num) {
if ($num == 0) return '00000000';
// set sign bit, and add another, higher one, which will be stripped later
$sign = $num < 0 ? 0x300 : 0x200;
$significant = abs($num);
$exponent = floor(log($significant, 2));
// get 24 most significant binary bits before the comma:
$significant = round($significant / pow(2, $exponent-23));
// exponent has exponent-bias format:
$exponent += 127;
// format: 1 sign bit + 8 exponent bits + 23 significant bits,
// without left-most "1" of significant
$bin = substr(decbin($sign + $exponent), 1) .
substr(decbin($significant), 1);
// assert that result has correct number of bits:
if (strlen($bin) !== 32) {
return "unexpected error";
}
// convert binary representation to hex, with exactly 8 digits
return str_pad(dechex(bindec($bin)), 8, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);
}
It outputs the same as in the first solution.