Converting past date to "x hours ago", etc.

[AfterLifeLochie]

Hi all,

I'm trying to write a function that will compare two dates and return a string based date (for example, "21 hours ago", "Wednesday at 3:03pm"), and beyond one week it returns the date and time instead. (Similar to that of FaceBook's date display system, indicating when an event occured, if that clarifies what I want)

The function needs to take the date in question in MYSQL TIMESTAMP format (2010-07-10 10:10:49) and today's date in the MYSQL TIMESTAMP format.

Thanks.

[dagon]

do you have some code you need help with? Or where you expecting someone to write it for you?

[AfterLifeLochie]

I wrote the following functions (if anyone else out there is interested).

function FormatDate($str) {
	$now = DateDecode(date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s'), "mysql");
	if ($str['day'] == $now['day'] && $str['month'] == $now['month'] && $str['year'] == $now['year']) {
		return "Today at " . $str['hour'] . ":" . $str['minute'] . "" . $str['postfix'];
	}

$xs = strtotime($str['year'] . "-" . $str['month'] . "-" . $str['day'] . " " . $str['hour'] . ":" . $str['minute'] . ":" . $str['seccond']);
if (strftime("%U", $xs) == strftime("%U")) {
	return strftime("%A", $xs) .
	" at " . $str['hour'] . ":" . $str['minute'] . "" . $str['postfix'];
}
else {
	return strftime("%A", $xs) . " " . $str['day'] . "/" . $str['month'] . " at " . $str['hour'] . ":" . $str['minute'] . "" . $str['postfix'];
}
}

function DateDecode($str, $format) {
	if ($format == "mysql") {
		$date['postfix'] = 'AM';
		$date['year'] = substr($str, 0, 4);
		$date['month'] = substr($str, 5, 2);
		$date['day'] = substr($str, 8, 2);
		$date['hour'] = substr($str, 11, 2);
		if ($date['hour'] > 12) {
			$date['hour'] = $date['hour'] - 12;
			$date['postfix'] = 'PM';
		}
		$date['minute'] = substr($str, 14, 2);
		$date['seccond'] = substr($str, 17, 2);
		return $date;
	}
}

[dagon]

Thanks for sharing, please use the thread tools menu, to make this thread as solved.