Zach’s ugly mug (his face)

Zach Leatherman

PHP Pretty Date

10 Feb 2008 Read in about 1 minute

This class is pretty much a direct port of John Resig’s JavaScript Pretty Date to PHP 5. A few notes:

  • Requires PHP >= 5.10, due to the usage of PHP’s new DateTimeclass.
  • The new DateTime object parses strings using PHP’s strtotime, so you don’t need to pass in an ISO8601 formatted date, as in JavaScript Pretty Date. Try “now”, or “next Wednesday”, or “ 2 weeks 4 days 23 hours 9 seconds”.
  • Extended to handle Months and Years in the past (JavaScript version only goes to weeks)

Usage:

// pass in a String DateTime, compared to another String DateTime (defaults to now)
$myString = Date_Difference::getStringResolved('-7 weeks');
$myString = Date_Difference::getStringResolved('-7 weeks', '+1 week');
 
// pass in a DateTime object, compared to another DateTime object (defaults to now)
// useful with the Propel ORM, which uses DateTime objects internally.
$myString = Date_Difference::getString(new DateTime('-7 weeks'));
$myString = Date_Difference::getString(new DateTime('-7 weeks'), new DateTime('+1 week'));

Download PHP Pretty Date (PHP 5.10 , 1.86KB)

http://www.zachleat.com/Projects/phpPrettyDate/Date_Difference.phps

6 Comments

➡ Load Disqus to Leave a Comment ⬅

Ranie

23 Apr 2009 at 11:36PM

Thanks for this man! Was going to use the js version but I like the php better!

Devan

28 May 2009 at 02:31PM

This is great, i ran into a few issues with accurate yesterday handling, but i fixed them. you can see the fix here http://noise.weareplic.com/...

Loverly script.

Jelle

18 Feb 2010 at 10:29AM

Support for future!



= 5.1 by Zach Leatherman (zachleat.com)
// Slight modification denoted below to handle months and years.
class prettydate
{
public static function getStringResolved($date, $compareTo = NULL)
{
if(!is_null($compareTo)) {
$compareTo = new DateTime($compareTo);
}
return self::getString(new DateTime($date), $compareTo);
}

public static function getString(DateTime $date, DateTime $compareTo = NULL)
{
if(is_null($compareTo)) {
$compareTo = new DateTime('now');
}
$diff = $compareTo->format('U') - $date->format('U');
$dayDiff = floor($diff / 86400);

if(is_nan($dayDiff)) return '';

$end = 'ago';
if($dayDiff < 0) {# date is in the future
$end = &#039left&#039;
$dayDiff *= -1;
}

if($dayDiff == 0) {
if($diff < 60) {
return &#039Just now&#039;
} elseif($diff < 120) {
return &#0391 minute &#039.$end;
} elseif($diff < 3600) {
return floor($diff/60) . &#039 minutes &#039.$end;
} elseif($diff < 7200) {
return &#0391 hour &#039.$end;
} elseif($diff < 86400) {
return floor($diff/3600) . &#039 hours &#039.$end;
}
} elseif($dayDiff == 1) {
return &#039Yesterday&#039;
} elseif($dayDiff < 7) {
return $dayDiff . &#039 days &#039.$end;
} elseif($dayDiff == 7) {
return &#0391 week &#039.$end;
} elseif($dayDiff < (7*6)) { // Modifications Start Here
// 6 weeks at most
return ceil($dayDiff/7) . &#039 weeks &#039.$end;
} elseif($dayDiff < 365) {
return ceil($dayDiff/(365/12)) . &#039 months &#039.$end;
} else {
$years = round($dayDiff/365);
return $years . &#039 year&#039 . ($years != 1 ? &#039s&#039 : &#039&#039) . &#039 &#039.$end;
}
}
}

Benjamin C.

02 May 2011 at 03:17PM

Thanks for the script!

Woody

11 Jul 2011 at 08:35PM

Using in a new wordpress plugin, props dude, seems to fail for sub hours though...

Zach Leatherman

11 Jul 2011 at 10:55PM

Looking back on this script, I don't know that I'd recommend using it.

It makes more sense to output UTC and then pretty it up using JavaScript instead. Then you can cache your HTML. See this implementation. Also on GitHub.