Question

I am working on a issue tracking application with asp.net and sql server 2005. While tracking the issues I am storing the deadline as datetime in the database and also if someone posts a message in the message board the posting date/time is also getting stored in the db as datetime.

Now my requirement is to show the issue deadline as “2 days left” when only 2 days are left, just like that when the deadline is already over it sud display 2 days behind schedule. This I think could be achieved with sql server datediff(), but in case of the messages I need to show like posted by 2 hours 3 minutes ago….or posted by 3 days 18 hours ago or something similar…(we can eliminate the hours if it was posted even 1 day before).

Tried Google but could not find anything useful. Would; appreciate your kind help as always.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Use a variation on the following query, and adjust as needed. For other RDBMS’s replace the date functions with appropriate equivalents.

SELECT  CASE
          WHEN DateValue-GETDATE() >= 1 THEN CAST(DATEPART(dy, DateValue-GETDATE()) AS varchar) + ' day(s) remaining'
          WHEN DateValue-GETDATE() >= 0 THEN CAST(DATEPART(hh, DateValue-GETDATE()) AS varchar) + ' hour(s) remaining'
          /*Note, it's convenient to switch around for negatives*/
          WHEN GETDATE()-DateValue <= '00:59' THEN CAST(DATEPART(mi, GETDATE()-DateValue) AS varchar) + ' minutes(s) overdue'
          WHEN GETDATE()-DateValue <= 1 THEN CAST(DATEPART(hh, GETDATE()-DateValue) AS varchar) + ' hours(s) overdue'
        ELSE
          CONVERT(varchar, DateValue-GETDATE(), 121)
        END AS Time_Scale