Elapsed function problems

[Teach]

Hi guys.

I am using the following code to display how long ago something was (using the examples at the top of the code).

// Between a past time and now: 
// $elapsed_time = elapsed(strtotime('2004-05-19')); 
// $elapsed_time = elapsed(strtotime('2004-05-19 13:12:11')); 

// Between two times: 
// $elapsed_time = elapsed(strtotime('2004-05-19'), strtotime('2008-11-20')); 

// Between a future time and now: 
// $elapsed_time = elapsed(strtotime('2008-11-20')); 

// Between a past time and now, with seconds included in the return 'string 'element: 
// $elapsed_time = elapsed(strtotime('2004-05-19'), null, 'seconds'); 
// With days minumum (not hours, minutes, or seconds) in the 'string': 
// $elapsed_time = elapsed(strtotime('2004-05-19'), null, 'days'); 

function elapsed($start_ts, $now_ts = null, $min_period = 'minutes') 
{ 
  $periods = array('years', 'months', 'days', 'hours', 'minutes', 'seconds'); 
  if (empty($now_ts)) { 
    $now_ts = time(); 
  } 
  $same = false; 
  if ($now_ts == $start_ts) { 
    $same = true; 
  } elseif ($now_ts < $start_ts) { 
    $tmp_ts = $now_ts; 
    $now_ts = $start_ts; 
    $start_ts = $tmp_ts; 
  } 
  $min_key = array_keys($periods, $min_period); 
  $ret['string'] = ''; 
  foreach ($periods as $key => $period) { 
    $ret[$period] = 0; 
    if ($same) { 
      continue; 
    } 
    while (($start_ts = strtotime('+1 ' . $period, $start_ts)) < $now_ts) { 
      $ret[$period]++; 
    } 
    $start_ts = strtotime('-1 ' . $period, $start_ts); 
    if ($key > $min_key[0]) { 
      continue; 
    } 
    if ($ret[$period] !== 0) { 
      $ret['string'] .= $ret[$period] . ' ' . $period; 
      if ($ret[$period] === 1) { 
        $ret['string'] = substr($ret['string'], 0, strlen($ret['string']) - 1); 
      } 
      $ret['string'] .= ', '; 
    } 
  } 
  if (!$ret['string']) $ret['string'] = $ret['seconds'] . ' seconds'; 
  $ret['string'] = rtrim($ret['string'], ', '); 
  return $ret; 
} 

The problem is that on the end of certain months, for example today (Mon 31st March) it always returns 0 seconds, nothing else.

Any idea why that is, and if it's fixable? Apart from that it works like a dream

I found out from someone trying to help that we can get calendar months via:

$daysInMonth = cal_days_in_month(CAL_GREGORIAN, $monthNumber, $yearNumber);

but I'm unsure how to integrate that with the PHP code?

Any help trying to resolve this woud be much appreciated. It's annoying!

[leatherback]

Dan,

Any reason in particular why you wrote this whole elaborate function? Do you have dificult times coming in? You could afaik convert the time in unix timestamps, substract and format the difference in a sensible time?

Smething like:
$diff = strtotime($timestring1) - strtotime($timestring2) ;
and format with [man]date[/man]

[Teach]

Hi there, thanks for your reply 🙂

well, we use it in so many places we had to look for a function like this - it's had a few edits but works perfectly except for those end days