PHP: 'Posted 10 Minutes Ago' or 'Posted 8 Days Ago'

PHP
1

I am building a site where you can post certain media and articles. I want to have a note that says Posted however long ago, be it minutes, hours, or days.

How can I do this?

I can do a now() time stamp on the posts to work with.

Unless I should use something else.

Thanks
Ryan

2

I’d really like to know how to do this too, it’d be useful knowledge for a project I’m working on.

3

When the record is inserted:

INSERT mytable (posttime) VALUES (NOW());

When fetched:

SELECT posttime, NOW() AS currtime FROM mytable;

Use data/time function and do the math for the difference.

4

Perhaps you are thinking something on the order of:


function seconds_ago_to_desc($ago) {
  if ($ago >= 86400) {
    return floor($ago/86400).' days ago';
  } elseif ($ago >= 3600) {
    return floor($ago/3600).' hours ago';
  } elseif ($ago >= 60) {
    return floor($ago/60).' minutes ago';
  } else {
    return $ago.' seconds ago';
  }
}
5

How do I get my $ago variable?

I have a column titled ‘date2’ that has the datetime format…

Thanks
Ryan

6

This is what I went with:


$todaydate = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");

$ago = strtotime($todaydate) - strtotime($daily['date2']);
  if ($ago >= 86400) {
    $diff = floor($ago/86400).' days ago';
  } elseif ($ago >= 3600) {
    $diff = floor($ago/3600).' hours ago';
  } elseif ($ago >= 60) {
    $diff = floor($ago/60).' minutes ago';
  } else {
    $diff = $ago.' seconds ago';
  }

//then echo $diff later

Is there an easier way?

Thanks
Ryan

7

Looks perfect to me, you should wrap the date_to_second functionality in a function (better in a class), as it is likely to be reused.