Question

I want to implement a functionality for my project. It’s very similar to a feature on Stack Overflow where user post requests and gets responses. Here on Stack Overflow we see post marked as 4 seconds ago, 22 seconds ago, 1 minute ago, 5 minutes ago etc. I want to implement the same.

I am storing the request posted time in a timestamp variable in MySQL, then subtracting NOW() - stored_time to get the seconds. Then writing some logic, like

• if less than 60 seconds, display 60 seconds ago
• if difference in between 60 to 3600, display in minutes

and so on. This long logic is written in Perl. I want to avoid that. Is there any good way to achieve the same thing? I am open to change the MySQL table and data type.

Answer 1

Retrieve the datestamps as DateTime objects. You don’t show any details of your database, so I have to skip that step in my answer.

use DateTime qw();
use DateTime::Format::Human::Duration qw();

for my $seconds (555, 5555, 555555, 5555555) {
    my $now = DateTime->now;
    my $before = $now->clone->subtract(seconds => $seconds);
    my $formatted = DateTime::Format::Human::Duration
        ->new->format_duration($before - $now);
    $formatted =~ s/(?:,| and).*//;
    print "about $formatted ago\n";
}

# about 9 minutes ago
# about 1 hour ago
# about 6 days ago
# about 2 months ago