Time ago strings...

[massung]

For a couple of my internet apps that I've been working on, I've needed something nice that tells me how long ago something happened given an internet timestamp (whether from an RSS feed, my own PostgreSQL query, etc). Anyway, what I have turns out to be pretty nice and I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else could benefit from it.

Code: Select all

function timeAgo pDate
   local tNow, tDiff, tDay
   
   -- convert the internet date to seconds
   convert pDate to seconds
   put pDate into tDay
   
   -- make sure it is a valid date/timestamp
   if the result is not empty then
      return pDate
   end if
   
   -- figure out what day it is now
   put the date into tNow
   convert tNow to seconds
   
   -- special case, check for "Today" when there is no time specified
   if tNow - pDate is zero then
      return "Today"
   end if
   
   -- extract just the date and convert it back
   convert tDay to date
   convert tDay to seconds
   
   if tDay < tNow then
      put (tNow - tDay) div (24 * 60 * 60) into tDiff
      
      -- duration could be on the order of days, weeks, months, or years
      if tDiff < 2 then
         return "Yesterday"
      else if tDiff < 7 then
         return tDiff && "days ago"
      else if tDiff < 14 then
         return "1 week ago"
      else if tDiff < 28 then
         return (tDiff div 7) && "weeks ago"
      else if tDiff < 56 then
         return "1 month ago"
      else if tDiff < 365 then
         return (tDiff div 30) && "months ago"
      else if tDiff < 730 then
         return "1 year ago"
      end if
      
      -- a very long time ago, in a galaxy far away ;-)
      return (tDiff div 365) && "years ago"
   end if
   
   -- get the number of seconds that have elapsed instead
   put the seconds into tNow
   put tNow - pDate into tDiff
   
   -- duration could be seconds, minutes, or hours
   if tDiff < 60 then
      return "less than 1 minute ago"
   else if tDiff < 120 then
      return "1 minute ago"
   else if tDiff < 60 * 60 then
      return (tDiff div 60) && "minutes ago"
   else if tDiff < 120 * 60 then
      return "1 hour ago"
   end if
   
   -- several hours ago
   return (tDiff div 3600) && "hours ago"
end timeAgo

Jeff M.