Question

Hello in my database date / time are in this format

2010-06-01T18:20:25+0000

I’d like to echo that out to time passed since that date / time

e.g.

4 days 3 hours 36 minutes and 4 seconds

is this possible?

Answer 1

Below is a function I wrote to do this. Feel free to use it.

/**
 * Returns rough (in largest single unit) time elapsed between two times.
 * @param int $iTime0  Initial time, as time_t.
 * @param int $iTime1  Final time, as time_t. 0=use current time.
 * @return string Time elapsed, like "5 minutes" or "3 days" or "1 month".
 *              You might print "ago" after this return if $iTime1 is now.
 * @author Dan Kamins - dos at axonchisel dot net
 */
function ax_getRoughTimeElapsedAsText($iTime0, $iTime1 = 0)
{
    if ($iTime1 == 0) { $iTime1 = time(); }
    $iTimeElapsed = $iTime1 - $iTime0;

    if ($iTimeElapsed < (60)) {
        $iNum = intval($iTimeElapsed); $sUnit = "second";
    } else if ($iTimeElapsed < (60*60)) {
        $iNum = intval($iTimeElapsed / 60); $sUnit = "minute";
    } else if ($iTimeElapsed < (24*60*60)) {
        $iNum = intval($iTimeElapsed / (60*60)); $sUnit = "hour";
    } else if ($iTimeElapsed < (30*24*60*60)) {
        $iNum = intval($iTimeElapsed / (24*60*60)); $sUnit = "day";
    } else if ($iTimeElapsed < (365*24*60*60)) {
        $iNum = intval($iTimeElapsed / (30*24*60*60)); $sUnit = "month";
    } else {
        $iNum = intval($iTimeElapsed / (365*24*60*60)); $sUnit = "year";
    }

    return $iNum . " " . $sUnit . (($iNum != 1) ? "s" : "");
}

To use this func, you’d need to first convert your times to time_t format (integer #seconds since the “epoch”). Either of these PHP functions will probably help with that: http://php.net/strptime or http://php.net/strtotime.