Display “time ago” instead of datetime in PHP Code

Question

I would like to display a time format like twitter and FB (Posted 3 hours ago, Posted 2 minutes ago and so on...)

I've tried this piece of code without success :

function format_interval($timestamp, $granularity = 2) {
  $units = array('1 year|@count years' => 31536000, '1 week|@count weeks' => 604800, '1 day|@count days' => 86400, '1 hour|@count hours' => 3600, '1 min|@count min' => 60, '1 sec|@count sec' => 1);
  $output = '';
  foreach ($units as $key => $value) {
    $key = explode('|', $key);
    if ($timestamp >= $value) {
      $floor = floor($timestamp / $value);
      $output .= ($output ? ' ' : '') . ($floor == 1 ? $key[0] : str_replace('@count', $floor, $key[1]));
      $timestamp %= $value;
      $granularity--;
    }

    if ($granularity == 0) {
      break;
    }
}

I use this function with a callback into another function like : $this->format_interval(); and pass it to my View

My current format date is : 2012-07-26 09:31:pm and already stored in my DB

Any help will be very appreciated!

Answer 1

Try something like this in a my_date_helper.php file (source: Codeigniter Forums):

<?php  if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

if( ! function_exists('relative_time'))
{
    function relative_time($datetime)
    {
        $CI =& get_instance();
        $CI->lang->load('date');

        if(!is_numeric($datetime))
        {
            $val = explode(" ",$datetime);
           $date = explode("-",$val[0]);
           $time = explode(":",$val[1]);
           $datetime = mktime($time[0],$time[1],$time[2],$date[1],$date[2],$date[0]);
        }

        $difference = time() - $datetime;
        $periods = array("second", "minute", "hour", "day", "week", "month", "year", "decade");
        $lengths = array("60","60","24","7","4.35","12","10");

        if ($difference > 0) 
        { 
            $ending = $CI->lang->line('date_ago');
        } 
        else 
        { 
            $difference = -$difference;
            $ending = $CI->lang->line('date_to_go');
        }
        for($j = 0; $difference >= $lengths[$j]; $j++)
        {
            $difference /= $lengths[$j];
        } 
        $difference = round($difference);

        if($difference != 1) 
        { 
            $period = strtolower($CI->lang->line('date_'.$periods[$j].'s'));
        } else {
            $period = strtolower($CI->lang->line('date_'.$periods[$j]));
        }

        return "$difference $period $ending";
    }


} 

The format is a little different than the one you're using in your database (why do you mark times with pm/am rather than just use 24 hour times and convert for the frontend?). Either way, shouldn't take much work to get it working.

Answer 2

The Date Helper's timespan() method just does that:

The most common purpose for this function is to show how much time has elapsed from some point in time in the past to now.

Given a timestamp, it will show how much time has elapsed in this format:

1 Year, 10 Months, 2 Weeks, 5 Days, 10 Hours, 16 Minutes

So, in your example, all you need to do is convert your date to a timestamp and do something like this:

$post_date = '13436714242';
$now = time();

// will echo "2 hours ago" (at the time of this post)
echo timespan($post_date, $now) . ' ago';

Answer 3

<?php 

    $this->load->helper('date');

    //client created date get from database
    $date=$client_list->created_date; 

    // Declare timestamps
    $last = new DateTime($date);
    $now = new DateTime( date( 'Y-m-d h:i:s', time() )) ; 

    // Find difference
    $interval = $last->diff($now);

    // Store in variable to be used for calculation etc
    $years = (int)$interval->format('%Y');
    $months = (int)$interval->format('%m');
    $days = (int)$interval->format('%d');
    $hours = (int)$interval->format('%H');
    $minutes = (int)$interval->format('%i');

                                 //   $now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');


                                 if($years > 0)
                                 {
                                 echo $years.' Years '.$months.' Months '.$days.' Days '. $hours.' Hours '.$minutes.' minutes ago.' ;
                                 }
                                 else if($months > 0)
                                 {
                                 echo $months.' Months '.$days.' Days '. $hours.' Hours '.$minutes.' minutes ago.' ;
                                 }
                                 else if($days > 0)
                                 {
                                 echo $days.' Days '.$hours.' Hours '.$minutes.' minutes ago.' ;
                                 }
                                 else if($hours > 0)
                                 {
                                 echo  $hours.' Hours '.$minutes.' minutes ago.' ;
                                 }
                                 else
                                 {
                                 echo $minutes.' minutes ago.' ;
                                 }


                                 ?>

Answer 4

I had a function that solved this like this:

$int_diff       =   (time() - $int_time);

$str_this_year  =   date('Y-01-01', $int_time);
$str_weekday    =   t('time_weekday_'.strtolower(date('l', $int_time)));
$str_month      =   t('time_month_'.strtolower(date('F', $int_time)));

$arr_time_formats   =   array(  '-90 seconds'   =>  t('time_a_minute_at_most'),
                                '-45 minutes'   =>  t('time_minutes_ago', ceil($int_diff / (60))),
                                '-70 minutes'   =>  t('time_an_hour_at_most'),
                                '-8 hours'      =>  t('time_hours_ago', ceil($int_diff / (60 * 60))),
                                'today'         =>  t('time_hours_ago', ceil($int_diff / (60 * 60))),
                                'yesterday'     =>  t('time_yesterday', date('H:i', $int_time)),
                                '-4 days'       =>  t('time_week_ago', $str_weekday, date('H:i', $int_time)),
                                $str_this_year  =>  t('time_date', date('j', $int_time), $str_month, date('H:i', $int_time)),
                                0               =>  t('time_date_year', date('j', $int_time), $str_month, date('Y', $int_time), date('H:i', $int_time)));

if ($boo_whole)
    return $arr_time_formats[0];

foreach(array_keys($arr_time_formats) as $h)
    if ($int_time >= strtotime($h))
        return $arr_time_formats[$h];

Basicly t() is a function combined with $this->lang->line() and sprintf(). The idea here is to give keys that's runned through strtotime() till you reach the closest time, with 0 being the fallback.

This approach is really good since you can easy adjust the times with a nice overview. I could give more piece of the code, but it feels like doing too much of the work :) Basicly this is just the theory behind how you can do it.