Question

I checked and this is not a duplicate. I have this function

$since = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($since));        
        $date = new DateTime($since);
        $interval = $date->diff(new DateTime('now'));
        return $interval->format('%y years, %m months, %d days, %h hours and %i minutos ago %s seconds ago');

But of course, I get a date like “5 years, 2 months, 5 days …. “

What I want to get is just one part of the interval. Meaning, I dont want to get “0 years, 0 months, 0 days”, but lets say “3 minutes” or “5 days” etc…

I’m new with DateTime but didn’t find a function in the php.net site that did that. Is there one or I have to create one by myself? Thanks!

Answer 1

This is what I came up with:

<?php

/**
 * Return formatted interval where only the largest unit gets displayes.
 * @param DateInterval $interval
 *
 * @return string
 */
function format_properly(DateInterval $interval) {
    if ($interval->y !== 0) {
        return $interval->format("%y years");
    }
    if ($interval->m !== 0) {
        return $interval->format("%m months");
    }
    if ($interval->d !== 0) {
        return $interval->format("%d days");
    }
    if ($interval->h !== 0) {
        return $interval->format("%h hours");
    }
    if ($interval->i !== 0) {
        return $interval->format("%i minutes");
    }
    if ($interval->s !== 0) {
        return $interval->format("%s seconds");
    }
    return "0 seconds";
}

$date = new DateTime("now");
$date->sub(new DateInterval("PT2H5M")); //Now - 2 hours and 5 minutes

$now = new DateTime("now");

$interval = $date->diff($now);

echo format_properly($interval);
var_dump($interval);