Question

Is there simple way to convert time interval (age) to text?
For example – age is 25.45y. I need conversion to “25 years, 3 months, 1 day“. Question is not about numbers 25,3,1 but how to translate year/month/day using correct form (plural, declension) to different languages. English language seems to be easy to hardcode but others are not and I would prefer some generic solution.

number / English / Czech / …
1 / day / den
2 / days / dny
5 / days / dnů
…

Answer 1

Joda time will do that pretty easily.

For example:

public static void main(String[] args) {
  PeriodFormatter daysHoursMinutes = new PeriodFormatterBuilder()
    .appendDays()
    .appendSuffix(" day", " days")
    .appendSeparator(" and ")
    .appendMinutes()
    .appendSuffix(" minute", " minutes")
    .appendSeparator(" and ")
    .appendSeconds()
    .appendSuffix(" second", " seconds")
    .toFormatter();

  Period period = new Period(72, 24, 12, 0);

  System.out.println(daysHoursMinutes.print(period));
  System.out.println(daysHoursMinutes.print(period.normalizedStandard()));
}

Will print:

24 minutes and 12 seconds
3 days and 24 minutes and 12 seconds

See also: Period to string