I’m looking for a fuzzy date algorithm. I just started writing one and realised what a tedious task it is. It quickly degenerated into a lot of horrid code to cope with special cases like the difference between “yesterday”, “last week” and “late last month” all of which can (in some cases) refer to the same day but are individually correct based on today’s date.
I feel sure there must be an open source fuzzy date formatter but I can’t find it. Ideally I’d like something using NSDate (OSX/iPhone) and its formatters but that isn’t the difficult bit. Does anyone know of a fuzzy date formatter taking any time period relative to now and returning a string like (but not limited to):
- a few moments ago
- in the last five minutes
- earlier today
- this morning
- last night
- last week
- last wednesday
- early last month
- june last year
- a couple of years ago
In an ideal world I’d like the string to be as rich as possible (i.e. returning random variants on “Just a moment ago” such as “just now”).
Clarification. I’m looking for something more subtle than basic buckts and strings. I want something that knows “yesterday” and “last wednesday” can both refer to the same period but only one is correct when today is Thursday.
This question should get you started. It has the code this very site uses to calculate its relative time. It may not have the specific ranges you want, but they are easy enough to add once you got it setup.