Best way to format a date relative to now on Android

Question

I am creating a feature in an Android app to get an arbitrary date (past, present or future) and find the difference relative to now.

Both my now and

Answer 1

The actual reason is the number 864000 is in miliseconds, which corresponds to 14 minutes. 14 minutes is so small compared to DAY_IN_MILLIS (a day). There for you get "in 0 days". If you want it to produce "in 14 mins", just change DAY_IN_MILLIS to MIN_IN_MILLIS.

Answer 2

What I have in mind is changing:

DateUtils.getRelativeTimeSpanString(due, now, 0L, DateUtils.FORMAT_ABBREV_ALL);

Since the documentation says it returns the time relative to now.

If that fails use some of the brilliant libraries:

Joda Time

PrettyTime

TimeAgo

Answer 3

for Android you can use most simple way with Joda-Time-Android library:

Date yourTime = new Date();
DateTime dateTime = new DateTime(yourTime); //or simple DateTime.now()
final String result = DateUtils.getRelativeTimeSpanString(getContext(), dateTime);

Answer 4

build.gradle

compile 'joda-time:joda-time:2.9.9'

Utils.java

private static SimpleDateFormat DATE_FORMAT = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy");
    private static SimpleDateFormat TIME_FORMAT = new SimpleDateFormat(" 'at' h:mm aa");
    public static String getRelativeDateTimeString(Calendar startDateCalendar) {
        if (startDateCalendar == null) return null;

        DateTime startDate = new DateTime(startDateCalendar.getTimeInMillis());
        DateTime today = new DateTime();
        int days = Days.daysBetween(today.withTimeAtStartOfDay(), startDate.withTimeAtStartOfDay()).getDays();

        String date;
        switch (days) {
            case -1: date = "Yesterday"; break;
            case 0: date = "Today"; break;
            case 1: date = "Tomorrow"; break;
            default: date = DATE_FORMAT.format(startDateCalendar.getTime()); break;
        }
        String time = TIME_FORMAT.format(startDateCalendar.getTime());
        return date + time;
    }

Output

Yesterday at 9:52 AM
Today at 9:52 AM
Tomorrow at 9:52 AM
Sep 05, 2017 at 9:52 AM

Answer 5

I came here for an alternative but I can't find perfect rather than my code. So I shared here any improvements are welcome.

public String getCreatedAtRelative() {
    SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'", Locale.US);
    df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("IST"));
    CharSequence relative = null;
    try {
        relative = DateUtils.getRelativeTimeSpanString(df.parse(createdAt).getTime(), new Date().getTime(),
                0L, DateUtils.FORMAT_ABBREV_ALL);
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        Log.e("Parse Exception adapter", "created at", e);
    } catch (NullPointerException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    if (null == relative) {
        return createdAt;
    } else {
        return relative.toString().replace(".", " ");
    }
}

Answer 6

Best way to format a date relative to now on Android

I suggest you to use JodaTime

It's lightweight handy library and i think actually the best tool for working with Date instances.

And you can start here.