jQuery Time ago from a timestamp?

Question

Below is a really nice time ago plugin for jQuery, very similar to what they use here on SO. The problem for me is that it uses this to convert time.

Answer 1

Here is something in JavaScript using nothing but Unix timestamps.

var d1;
var d2;
d1 = (new Date()).getTime(); setTimeout( function() { d2 = (new Date()).getTime(); }, 5000 );
var secondsElapsed = (d2 - d1) / 1000;
secondsElapsed; // 5 seconds

Now, you can either store a timestamp in a JavaScript variable in the same scope as your "timeago" function, or your can store it in an HTML element. As mentioned, the time element is an HTML 5 element. You could do something like:

123456

Then maybe you have a comment item like:

  
Lorem ipsum et dolor...123456

You could then get the timestamp for a comment by (assuming jQuery since you mentioned it):

var tstamps = $('.comment .timestamp'); // array of comment timestamps
var timeago = ( (new Date()).getTime() - tstamps[0].html() ) / 1000;

It's a bit hackish, but it would work (if I did it right).