function that formats the time difference

Question

I am trying to create a function that compares a date with the current time, and returns a nicely formatted string.
I have written some code in haste and it works, but I

Answer 1

I'd recommend doing it in javascript. You can use the TimeAgo plugin for jquery. The cool thing about this is it will update in realtime on the client side without any page refresh. This is dead simple to use, and fits your requirements.

Answer 2

Some code I use and it's never failed, just put the Unix timestamp in, if you use a second argument in the function that can be the "to" condition

echo timeDiffrence('1300392875');

function timeDiffrence($from, $to = null){
    $to = (($to === null) ? (time()) : ($to));
    $to = ((is_int($to)) ? ($to) : (strtotime($to)));
    $from = ((is_int($from)) ? ($from) : (strtotime($from)));
    $units = array
    (
    "y"   => 29030400, // seconds in a year   (12 months)
    "month"  => 2419200,  // seconds in a month  (4 weeks)
    "w"   => 604800,   // seconds in a week   (7 days)
    "d"    => 86400,    // seconds in a day    (24 hours)
    "h"   => 3600,     // seconds in an hour  (60 minutes)
    "m" => 60,       // seconds in a minute (60 seconds)
    "s" => 1         // 1 second
    );
    $diff = abs($from - $to);
    $suffix = (($from > $to) ? ("from now") : ("ago"));
    foreach($units as $unit => $mult)
    if($diff >= $mult)
    {
        //$and = (($mult != 1) ? ("") : ("and "));
        $output .= "".$and.intval($diff / $mult)."".$unit.((intval($diff / $mult) == 1) ? ("") : (""));
        $diff -= intval($diff / $mult) * $mult;
    }
    $output .= " ".$suffix;
    $output = substr($output, strlen(""));
    if($output =='go' || $output ==' ago'){$output = 'A few secs ago';}
    return $output;
}