Rails shorter “time_ago_in_words”

Question

Is there a different time calculation in rails besides \"time_ago_in_words\"?? I want to be able to use just \'h\' for hours \'d\' days \'m\' for months... ex. 3d, or 4h, or 5m<

Answer 1

Here's some other ways to do it. You run the method like normal, and then you use gsub on the string.

Chained

string.gsub(/ mi.*/, 'm')
      .gsub(/ h.*/, 'h')
      .gsub(/ d.*/, 'd')
      .gsub(/ mo.*/, 'mo')
      .gsub(/ y.*/, 'y')

Hash

string.gsub(/ .+/, { 
  ' minute'=> 'm', ' minutes'=>'m', 
  ' hour' => 'h', ' hours' => 'h', 
  ' day' => 'd', ' days' => 'd', 
  ' month' => 'mo', ' months' => 'mo', 
  ' year' => 'y', ' years' => 'y' 
})

Block

string.gsub(/ .+/) { |x| x[/mo/] ? 'mo' : x[1] }

They all do the same except for when the string is "less than a minute". The chained solution returns "less than a minute". The hash solution returns "less". The block solution returns "lesst".

Just change the locale file for this one case

en:
  datetime:
    distance_in_words:
      less_than_x_minutes:
        one: '<1m'

Or add a return to clause at the top of your method

def my_method(string)
  return '<1m' if string == 'less than a minute'
  # code
end

Note: Does not include solutions for include_seconds: true option.

Answer 2

The components that make up this string can be localised, and are in the datetime.distance_in_words namespace

For example stick

en:
  datetime:
    distance_in_words:
      x_minutes:
        one: "1m"
        other: "%{count}m"

And rails will say 10m instead of 10 minutes. Repeat as needed for hours, seconds days etc. you can check locales/en.yml in action_view for all the keys.

If you only want the short format you could create a pseudo locale that only used those keys and use it like so

time_ago_in_words created_at, false, :locale => :en_abbrev