PHP Time Since Function?

Question

I'm looking for a function that will take in a unix timestamp and output something like this:

4 years, 3 months, 12 days, 4 hours and 23 minutes ago.

Everything I have found has been pretty dates that just say something similar to "5 years ago" which I don't want.

@Patrick: Not truly duplicate. Over there there is no implementation except for pointing out to some urls :) — Sarfraz, Feb 15 '11 at 22:03

score 24 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 15 '11 at 22:18

24

You want DateInterval's format method:

$date = new \DateTime();
$date->setTimestamp($timestamp);
$interval = $date->diff(new \DateTime('now'));
echo $interval->format('%y years, %m months, %d days, %h hours and %i minutes ago');

answered Feb 15 '11 at 22:18

rojoca

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I really wish people would use the DateTime objects more, I hate seeing all the second manipulations. – Jacob Feb 15 '11 at 22:38
Is this only available in php 5.3+ ? – wesbos Feb 15 '11 at 22:52
@Wes: yes, according to php.net. – jocap Feb 15 '11 at 22:54
Thanks, this seems the smartest way to go but I would like to be able to support at least 5.2 – wesbos Feb 16 '11 at 05:59
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@Wes - fair enough. Although a friendly reminder that php ended 5.2 support December 2010 ;) – rojoca Feb 16 '11 at 17:21
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If we only lived in such a world :) – wesbos Feb 16 '11 at 19:27
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what's the backslash for in front of DateTime ? – David Beckwith Oct 08 '15 at 06:04
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@DavidBeckwith - to ensure you are using the `DateTime` from the global namespace. Probably unnecessary. – rojoca Oct 08 '15 at 19:32
@rojoca ah ok thank you! – David Beckwith Oct 10 '15 at 16:25
How would you output only the largest unit? ie.. 10 hours ago, or 3 months ago, but not the whole string of every single interval. – sxflynn Apr 11 '16 at 20:01
@sxflynn you should check the docs for DateInterval http://ca2.php.net/manual/en/class.dateinterval.php - there are properties for each unit e.g. `$interval->y` – rojoca Apr 11 '16 at 21:10

PHP Time Since Function?

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