Question

I have a table that has 2 date columns, one is the timestamp value(eg 1359380165) and the other in normal datetime value (eg. 2013-01-28 08:32:53).

I want to find the time lapse between now (Current) and these dates listed above. So the results will be eg.

1. Daniel changed his password 5mins ago
2. Jeniffer deleted her phone number 3days ago.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This function should do something similar to what you’re after, give it a try, it just needs a unix timestamp passed to it like your ‘1359380165’ one.

function getRelativeTime($timestamp)
{
    $timeDifference = time() - $timestamp;
    $timePeriods    = array('second', 'minute', 'hour', 'day', 'week','month', 'years', 'decade');
    $timeLengths    = array('60', '60', '24', '7', '4.35', '12', '10');

    if ($timeDifference > 0)
    {
            $timeSuffix = 'ago';
    }
    else
    {
        $timeDifference = -$timeDifference;
        $timeSuffix     = 'to go';
    }

    for($i = 0; $timeDifference >= $timeLengths[$i]; $i++)
    {
        $timeDifference/= $timeLengths[$i];
        $timeDifference = round($timeDifference);
    }

    if($timeDifference != 1) $timePeriods[$i].= 's';

    return $timeDifference . ' ' . $timePeriods[$i] . ' ' . $timeSuffix;
}