Question

I have a SQL Datestamp like this: 2012-02-20 21:14:54

How would I print out the relative date and time in PHP?

e.g.

Occured: a few seconds ago
Occured: 4 minutes ago
Occured: 4 hours ago
Occured: Monday Jan 8th, 2012

After the hours I just want to print out the actual date

Answer 1

Found this after two seconds of Google http://www.mdj.us/web-development/php-programming/another-variation-on-the-time-ago-php-function-use-mysqls-datetime-field-type

In general you chose a unit of time like seconds, test if the time-difference is smaller then the max-value for this unit (60s) and if so, print out “$timeDifference $unit”. If not you divide the difference by the units max-value and start over with the next higher unit (minutes).

Example:

$timeDif = 60*60*5 + 45; // == 5 hours 45 seconds

// 60 seconds in a minute
if ($timeDif < 60) // false
    return "$timeDif second(s) ago";

// convert seconds to minutes
$timeDif = floor($timeDif / 60); // == 300 = 5 * 60

// 60 minutes in an hour
if ($timeDif < 60) // false
    return "$timeDif minute(s) ago";

// convert minutes to hours
$timeDif = floor($timeDif / 60); // == 5

// 24 hours in a day
if ($timeDif < 24)
    return "$timeDif hour(s) ago";

// ...