Question

Say I have a date function that produces

the output: 2011-10-03

PHP:

$todayDt = date('Y-m-d');

Anyway to get this date to instead show 2 days 1 hour ago

Answer 1

This function might be of some use. You might want to refine the check for months a bit, but this is just a quick example:

function RelativeTime($iTimestamp, $iLevel = 2)
{
    !ctype_digit($iTimestamp)
        && $iTimestamp = strtotime($iTimestamp);

    $iSecondsInADay = 86400;
    $aDisplay = array();

    // Start at the largest denominator
    $iDiff = time() - $iTimestamp;
    $aPeriods = array(
        array('Period'  => $iSecondsInADay * 356,   'Label'   => 'year'),
        array('Period'  => $iSecondsInADay * 31,    'Label'   => 'month'),
        array('Period'  => $iSecondsInADay,         'Label'   => 'day'),
        array('Period'  => 3600,                    'Label'   => 'hour'),
        array('Period'  => 60,                      'Label'   => 'minute'),
        array('Period'  => 1,                       'Label'   => 'second'),
    );

    foreach ($aPeriods as $aPeriod)
    {
        $iCount = floor($iDiff / $aPeriod['Period']);
        if ($iCount > 0)
        {
            $aDisplay[] = $iCount . ' ' . $aPeriod['Label'] . ($iCount > 1 ? 's' : '');
            $iDiff -= $iCount * $aPeriod['Period'];
        }
    }

    $iRange = count($aDisplay) > $iLevel
                ? $iLevel
                : count($aDisplay);
    return implode(' ', array_slice($aDisplay, 0, $iRange)) . ' ago';
}

And some examples of usage:

echo RelativeTime(time() - 102, 1);
// Will output: 1 minute ago

echo RelativeTime(time() - 2002);
// Will output: 33 minutes 22 seconds ago

echo RelativeTime(time() - 100002002, 6);
// Will output: 3 years 2 months 27 days 10 hours 20 minutes 2 seconds ago

echo RelativeTime('2011-09-05');
// Will output: 30 days 22 hours ago