You might have seen that many of the live applications shows the time relative to when it was posted as seconds ago, minutes ago, hours ago, days ago, weeks ago, month ago, year ago and so on. Instead of showing the whole date and time of any possible action on the application it is shown with smaller units, more simpler ones like a minute ago, 15 minutes and 10 seconds ago etc. Here is how we achieve it using PHP, below are two methods that can be used, it requires a Date Time string in YYYY-MM-DD HH:II:SS format.
Method One:
Method Two: in detail
Method One:
/**
* returns the time ago in string
* @param string $date_time
*
* @return string
*/
function timeAgo($date_time)
{
$time_ago = strtotime($date_time);
$cur_time = time();
$time_elapsed = $cur_time - $time_ago;
$seconds = $time_elapsed;
$minutes = round($time_elapsed / 60);
$hours = round($time_elapsed / 3600);
$days = round($time_elapsed / 86400);
$weeks = round($time_elapsed / 604800);
$months = round($time_elapsed / 2600640);
$years = round($time_elapsed / 31207680);
$str = ''; // Seconds
if ($seconds <= 60) {
$str = "few seconds ago";
} // Minuteselse
if ($minutes <= 60) {
if ($minutes == 1) {
$str = "one minute ago";
} else {
$str = "$minutes minutes ago";
}
} // Hours
else if ($hours <= 24) {
if ($hours == 1) {
$str = "an hour ago";
} else {
$str = "$hours hours ago";
}
} // Days
else if ($days <= 7) {
if ($days == 1) {
$str = "yesterday";
} else {
$str = "$days days ago";
}
} // Weeks
else if ($weeks <= 4.3) {
if ($weeks == 1) {
$str = "a week ago";
} else {
$str = "$weeks weeks ago";
}
} // Months
else if ($months <= 12) {
if ($months == 1) {
$str = "a month ago";
} else {
$str = "$months months ago";
}
} // Years
else {
if ($years == 1) {
$str = "one year ago";
} else {
$str = "$years years ago";
}
}
return $str;
}
echo timeAgo('2015-01-17 14:20:00'); Method Two: in detail
/**
* gives time ago in detailed
*
* @param string $date_time
* @return string
*/
function timeAgo($date_time)
{
$then = new DateTime($date_time);
$now = new DateTime();
$delta = $now->diff($then);
$quantities = array(
'year' => $delta->y,
'month' => $delta->m,
'day' => $delta->d,
'hour' => $delta->h,
'minute' => $delta->i,
'second' => $delta->s
);
$str = '';
foreach ($quantities as $unit => $value) {
if ($value == 0)
continue;
$str .= $value . ' ' . $unit;
if ($value != 1) {
$str .= 's';
}
$str .= ', ';
}
$str = $str == '' ? 'a moment ' : substr($str, 0, - 2);
return $str . ' ago';
}
echo timeAgo('2015-01-17 14:20:00'); 