Question

I got a script that saves a timestamp (using time() function) every time a user does a special action.

I want to show on a page how long ago a user did this action, in an easy to read user way. I currently got it to show how many hours ago it approximately was, but I’d like it to return in a way looking like this:

1 day, 5 hours and 30 mintues way…

Answer 1

To achieve what you want, you can simply do

$target = strtotime("Feb 7 2013 2:15 AM");
$now = time();
$diff = $now - $target;
$days = floor(($diff)/24/60/60);
$hours = floor(fmod($diff, 24*60*60)/60/60);
$minutes = floor(fmod(fmod($diff, 24*60*60),60*60)/60);
echo $days . " days " . $hours . " hours " . $minutes . " minutes"; // e.g. "2 days 14 hours 54 minutes"

A more versatile solution

function timeago($timestamp) {

    // Predefine variables
    $timeago = '';
    $past = FALSE;
    $future = FALSE;
    $prefixAgo = NULL;
    $prefixFromNow = NULL;
    $suffixAgo = "ago";
    $suffixFromNow = "from now";
    $wordSeperator = " ";

    // Current time
    $current = time();

    // Seconds ago
    $seconds = abs($current - $timestamp);

    // Determine whether the time is in the future or the past
    if ($current >= $timestamp) {
        $past = TRUE;
    } else {
        $future = TRUE;
    }

    // Calculate time ago in different formats
    $minutes = $seconds / 60;
    $hours = $minutes / 60;
    $days = $hours / 24;
    $months = $days / 30;
    $years = $days / 365;

    // Format time ago according to calculated time
    if      ($seconds < 45) { $timeago = "less than a minute"; }
    else if ($seconds < 90) { $timeago = "about a minute"; }
    else if ($minutes < 45) { $timeago = round($minutes) . " minutes"; }
    else if ($minutes < 90) { $timeago = "about an hour"; }
    else if ($hours < 24)   { $timeago = "about " . round($hours) . " hours"; }
    else if ($hours < 42)   { $timeago = "a day"; }
    else if ($days < 30)    { $timeago = round($days) . " days"; }
    else if ($days < 45)    { $timeago = "about a month"; }
    else if ($days < 365)   { $timeago = round($months) . " months"; }
    else if ($years < 1.5)  { $timeago = "about a year"; }
    else                    { $timeago = round($years) . " years"; }

    // Append prefix and suffix
    if (!empty($prefixAgo))     { $prefixAgo        = $prefixAgo . $wordSeperator; }
    if (!empty($suffixAgo))     { $suffixAgo        = $wordSeperator . $suffixAgo; }
    if (!empty($prefixFromNow)) { $prefixFromNow    = $prefixFromNow . $wordSeperator; }
    if (!empty($suffixFromNow)) { $suffixFromNow    = $wordSeperator . $suffixFromNow; }
    if ($past)                  { $timeago = $prefixAgo . $timeago . $suffixAgo; }
    if ($future)                { $timeago = $prefixFromNow . $timeago . $suffixFromNow; }

    // Return results
    if (!empty($timeago)) {
        return $timeago;
    } else {
        return NULL;
    }

}