PHP Pretty Date

February 10, 2008

Warning

This article is old and may contain information that is outdated, irrelevant, or—dare I say it—no longer accurate. Read with care!

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

Zach is a builder for the web with Netlify. He created the Eleventy site generator and is still fixated on web fonts. His public speaking résumé includes talks in eight different countries at events like Jamstack Conf, Beyond Tellerrand, Smashing Conference, CSSConf, and The White House. He is an emeritus of Filament Group, NEJS CONF, and still helps out with NebraskaJS. Read more about Zach »

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6 Comments

Ranie Disqus
24 Apr 2009

Thanks for this man! Was going to use the js version but I like the php better!
Devan Disqus
28 May 2009

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 Disqus
18 Feb 2010

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$end = &#039left'$dayDiff *= -1;} if($dayDiff == 0) { if($diff < 60) { return &#039Just now' } 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($dayDiff == 1) { return &#039Yesterday' } elseif($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. Disqus
02 May 2011

Thanks for the script!
Woody Disqus
12 Jul 2011

Using in a new wordpress plugin, props dude, seems to fail for sub hours though...
Zach Leatherman Disqus
12 Jul 2011

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.