PHP How to find the time elapsed since a date time? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Convert [saved_date] to timestamp. Get current timestamp.

current timestamp - [saved_date] timestamp.

Then you can format it with date();

You can normally convert most date formats to timestamps with the strtotime() function.

Answer 2

Most of the answers seem focused around converting the date from a string to time. It seems you're mostly thinking about getting the date into the '5 days ago' format, etc.. right?

This is how I'd go about doing that:

$time = strtotime('2010-04-28 17:25:43');

echo 'event happened '.humanTiming($time).' ago';

function humanTiming ($time)
{

    $time = time() - $time; // to get the time since that moment
    $time = ($time<1)? 1 : $time;
    $tokens = array (
        31536000 => 'year',
        2592000 => 'month',
        604800 => 'week',
        86400 => 'day',
        3600 => 'hour',
        60 => 'minute',
        1 => 'second'
    );

    foreach ($tokens as $unit => $text) {
        if ($time < $unit) continue;
        $numberOfUnits = floor($time / $unit);
        return $numberOfUnits.' '.$text.(($numberOfUnits>1)?'s':'');
    }

}

I haven't tested that, but it should work.

The result would look like

event happened 4 days ago

or

event happened 1 minute ago

cheers

Answer 3

Had to do this recently - hope this helps someone. It doesn't cater for every possibility, but met my needs for a project.

https://github.com/duncanheron/twitter_date_format

https://github.com/duncanheron/twitter_date_format/blob/master/twitter_date_format.php

Answer 4

Here I am using custom function for finding the time elapsed since a date time.

echo Datetodays('2013-7-26 17:01:10');

function Datetodays($d) {

        $date_start = $d;
        $date_end = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

        define('SECOND', 1);
        define('MINUTE', SECOND * 60);
        define('HOUR', MINUTE * 60);
        define('DAY', HOUR * 24);
        define('WEEK', DAY * 7);

        $t1 = strtotime($date_start);
        $t2 = strtotime($date_end);
        if ($t1 > $t2) {
            $diffrence = $t1 - $t2;
        } else {
            $diffrence = $t2 - $t1;
        }

        //echo "
".$date_end."  ".$date_start."  ".$diffrence;
        $results['major'] = array(); // whole number representing larger number in date time relationship
        $results1 = array();
        $string = '';

        $results['major']['weeks'] = floor($diffrence / WEEK);
        $results['major']['days'] = floor($diffrence / DAY);
        $results['major']['hours'] = floor($diffrence / HOUR);
        $results['major']['minutes'] = floor($diffrence / MINUTE);
        $results['major']['seconds'] = floor($diffrence / SECOND);

        //print_r($results);
        // Logic:
        // Step 1: Take the major result and transform it into raw seconds (it will be less the number of seconds of the difference)
        // ex: $result = ($results['major']['weeks']*WEEK)
        // Step 2: Subtract smaller number (the result) from the difference (total time)
        // ex: $minor_result = $difference - $result
        // Step 3: Take the resulting time in seconds and convert it to the minor format
        // ex: floor($minor_result/DAY)

        $results1['weeks'] = floor($diffrence / WEEK);
        $results1['days'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['weeks'] * WEEK)) / DAY));
        $results1['hours'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['days'] * DAY)) / HOUR));
        $results1['minutes'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['hours'] * HOUR)) / MINUTE));
        $results1['seconds'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['minutes'] * MINUTE)) / SECOND));

        //print_r($results1);

        if ($results1['weeks'] != 0 && $results1['days'] == 0) {
            if ($results1['weeks'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' week ago';
            } else {
                if ($results1['weeks'] == 2) {
                    $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' weeks ago';
                } else {
                    $string = '2 weeks ago';
                }
            }
        } elseif ($results1['weeks'] != 0 && $results1['days'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['weeks'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' week ago';
            } else {
                if ($results1['weeks'] == 2) {
                    $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' weeks ago';
                } else {
                    $string = '2 weeks ago';
                }
            }
        } elseif ($results1['weeks'] == 0 && $results1['days'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['days'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['days'] . ' day ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['days'] . ' days ago';
            }
        } elseif ($results1['days'] != 0 && $results1['hours'] != 0) {
            $string = $results1['days'] . ' day and ' . $results1['hours'] . ' hours ago';
        } elseif ($results1['days'] == 0 && $results1['hours'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['hours'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['hours'] . ' hour ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['hours'] . ' hours ago';
            }
        } elseif ($results1['hours'] != 0 && $results1['minutes'] != 0) {
            $string = $results1['hours'] . ' hour and ' . $results1['minutes'] . ' minutes ago';
        } elseif ($results1['hours'] == 0 && $results1['minutes'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['minutes'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['minutes'] . ' minute ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['minutes'] . ' minutes ago';
            }
        } elseif ($results1['minutes'] != 0 && $results1['seconds'] != 0) {
            $string = $results1['minutes'] . ' minute and ' . $results1['seconds'] . ' seconds ago';
        } elseif ($results1['minutes'] == 0 && $results1['seconds'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['seconds'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['seconds'] . ' second ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['seconds'] . ' seconds ago';
            }
        }
        return $string;
    }
?>

Answer 5

I think I have a function which should do what you want:

function time2string($timeline) {
    $periods = array('day' => 86400, 'hour' => 3600, 'minute' => 60, 'second' => 1);

    foreach($periods AS $name => $seconds){
        $num = floor($timeline / $seconds);
        $timeline -= ($num * $seconds);
        $ret .= $num.' '.$name.(($num > 1) ? 's' : '').' ';
    }

    return trim($ret);
}

Simply apply it to the difference between time() and strtotime('2010-04-28 17:25:43') as so:

print time2string(time()-strtotime('2010-04-28 17:25:43')).' ago';