[javascript] How to format time since xxx e.g. “4 minutes ago” similar to Stack Exchange sites

You might want to look at humanized_time_span: https://github.com/layam/js_humanized_time_span

It's framework agnostic and fully customizable.

Just download / include the script and then you can do this:

humanized_time_span("2011-05-11 12:00:00")  
   => '3 hours ago'

humanized_time_span("2011-05-11 12:00:00", "2011-05-11 16:00:00)  
   => '4 hours ago'

or even this:

var custom_date_formats = {
  past: [
    { ceiling: 60, text: "less than a minute ago" },
    { ceiling: 86400, text: "$hours hours, $minutes minutes and $seconds seconds ago" },
    { ceiling: null, text: "$years years ago" }
  ],
  future: [
    { ceiling: 60, text: "in less than a minute" },
    { ceiling: 86400, text: "in $hours hours, $minutes minutes and $seconds seconds time" },
    { ceiling: null, text: "in $years years" }
  ]
}

humanized_time_span("2010/09/10 10:00:00", "2010/09/10 10:00:05", custom_date_formats) 
  => "less than a minute ago"

Read the docs for more info.