Date Format - "X days hours minutes ago"

There are many solutions to this problem on the php time() page. see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.time.php

Here is one:

This is another function to calculate the difference between two times and output it in a relative format. This one, however, combines various units. In other words, it will return "3 days, 2 hours, 6 minutes, and 2 seconds ago" instead of "3 days ago."

Please bear in mind that it is intended for times that are very close together. It will not be accurate for calculating dates more than a month apart. This is because one of the units it relies on is "weeks," which do not correspond directly with months. What I'm trying to get across is, the program assumes that a month is precisely 4 weeks long, i.e. 28 days. This also means that a "year" according to this function is 336 days.

<?php
 function rel_time($from, $to = null)
 {
  $to = (($to === null) ? (time()) : ($to));
  $to = ((is_int($to)) ? ($to) : (strtotime($to)));
  $from = ((is_int($from)) ? ($from) : (strtotime($from)));

  $units = array
  (
   "year"   => 29030400, // seconds in a year   (12 months)
   "month"  => 2419200,  // seconds in a month  (4 weeks)
   "week"   => 604800,   // seconds in a week   (7 days)
   "day"    => 86400,    // seconds in a day    (24 hours)
   "hour"   => 3600,     // seconds in an hour  (60 minutes)
   "minute" => 60,       // seconds in a minute (60 seconds)
   "second" => 1         // 1 second
  );

  $diff = abs($from - $to);
  $suffix = (($from > $to) ? ("from now") : ("ago"));

  foreach($units as $unit => $mult)
   if($diff >= $mult)
   {
    $and = (($mult != 1) ? ("") : ("and "));
    $output .= ", ".$and.intval($diff / $mult)." ".$unit.((intval($diff / $mult) == 1) ? ("") : ("s"));
    $diff -= intval($diff / $mult) * $mult;
   }
  $output .= " ".$suffix;
  $output = substr($output, strlen(", "));

  return $output;
 }
?>

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The function rel_time() accepts two parameters: $from and $to. For best results, provide them as UNIX timestamps (derived from PHP's time() function). They also accept formats supported by strtotime(). $to is an optional argument and defaults to the current time.

The function will calculate the difference between $from and $to. If $from occurs after $to, the function will substitue "ago" with "from now."

Example usage:

<?php
 echo rel_time("September 2, 2010 4:20 PM");
 // returns "2 weeks, 4 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes, and 3 seconds from now"
?> 

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For some examples of how to do this and several other interesting things with DATETIME values, please see the peer-reviewed article here.  In particular you might be interested in "Practical Application #3, and the discussion contained in the paragraph entitled "Ambiguity of the term 'Month'."
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/A_201-Handling-date-and-time-in-PHP-and-MySQL.html

Best

call function like : dateTimeDiff('2010-09-02 00:00:00');

give answer like x year x month x days x hours ago

 

function dateTimeDiff($data_ref){

// Get the current date
$current_date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

// Extract from $current_date
$current_year = substr($current_date,0,4);
$current_month = substr($current_date,5,2);
$current_day = substr($current_date,8,2);

// Extract from $data_ref
$ref_year = substr($data_ref,0,4);
$ref_month = substr($data_ref,5,2);
$ref_day = substr($data_ref,8,2);

// create a string yyyymmdd 20071021
$tempMaxDate = $current_year . $current_month . $current_day;
$tempDataRef = $ref_year . $ref_month . $ref_day;

$tempDifference = $tempMaxDate-$tempDataRef;

// If the difference is GT 10 days show the date
if($tempDifference >= 10){
echo $data_ref;
} else {

// Extract $current_date H:m:ss
$current_hour = substr($current_date,11,2);
$current_min = substr($current_date,14,2);
$current_seconds = substr($current_date,17,2);

// Extract $data_ref Date H:m:ss
$ref_hour = substr($data_ref,11,2);
$ref_min = substr($data_ref,14,2);
$ref_seconds = substr($data_ref,17,2);

$hDf = $current_hour-$ref_hour;
$mDf = $current_min-$ref_min;
$sDf = $current_seconds-$ref_seconds;

// Show time difference ex: 2 min 54 sec ago.
//if($dDf<1){
if($hDf>0){
if($mDf<0){
$mDf = 60 + $mDf;
$hDf = $hDf - 1;
echo $mDf . ' min ago';
} else {
echo $hDf. ' hr ' . $mDf . ' min ago';
}
} else {
if($mDf>0){
echo $mDf . ' min ' . $sDf . ' sec ago';
} else {
echo $sDf . ' sec ago';
}
}
//} //else {
//echo $dDf . ' days ago';
//}
}
}

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