[php] PHP How to find the time elapsed since a date time?

How to find the time elapsed since a date time stamp like 2010-04-28 17:25:43, final out put text should be like xx Minutes Ago/xx Days Ago

Be warned, the majority of the mathematically calculated examples have a hard limit of 2038-01-18 dates and will not work with fictional dates.

As there was a lack of DateTime and DateInterval based examples, I wanted to provide a multi-purpose function that satisfies the OP's need and others wanting compound elapsed periods, such as 1 month 2 days ago. Along with a bunch of other use cases, such as a limit to display the date instead of the elapsed time, or to filter out portions of the elapsed time result.

Additionally the majority of the examples assume elapsed is from the current time, where the below function allows for it to be overridden with the desired end date.

/**
 * multi-purpose function to calculate the time elapsed between $start and optional $end
 * @param string|null $start the date string to start calculation
 * @param string|null $end the date string to end calculation
 * @param string $suffix the suffix string to include in the calculated string
 * @param string $format the format of the resulting date if limit is reached or no periods were found
 * @param string $separator the separator between periods to use when filter is not true
 * @param null|string $limit date string to stop calculations on and display the date if reached - ex: 1 month
 * @param bool|array $filter false to display all periods, true to display first period matching the minimum, or array of periods to display ['year', 'month']
 * @param int $minimum the minimum value needed to include a period
 * @return string
 */
function elapsedTimeString($start, $end = null, $limit = null, $filter = true, $suffix = 'ago', $format = 'Y-m-d', $separator = ' ', $minimum = 1)
{
    $dates = (object) array(
        'start' => new DateTime($start ? : 'now'),
        'end' => new DateTime($end ? : 'now'),
        'intervals' => array('y' => 'year', 'm' => 'month', 'd' => 'day', 'h' => 'hour', 'i' => 'minute', 's' => 'second'),
        'periods' => array()
    );
    $elapsed = (object) array(
        'interval' => $dates->start->diff($dates->end),
        'unknown' => 'unknown'
    );
    if ($elapsed->interval->invert === 1) {
        return trim('0 seconds ' . $suffix);
    }
    if (false === empty($limit)) {
        $dates->limit = new DateTime($limit);
        if (date_create()->add($elapsed->interval) > $dates->limit) {
            return $dates->start->format($format) ? : $elapsed->unknown;
        }
    }
    if (true === is_array($filter)) {
        $dates->intervals = array_intersect($dates->intervals, $filter);
        $filter = false;
    }
    foreach ($dates->intervals as $period => $name) {
        $value = $elapsed->interval->$period;
        if ($value >= $minimum) {
            $dates->periods[] = vsprintf('%1$s %2$s%3$s', array($value, $name, ($value !== 1 ? 's' : '')));
            if (true === $filter) {
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    if (false === empty($dates->periods)) {
        return trim(vsprintf('%1$s %2$s', array(implode($separator, $dates->periods), $suffix)));
    }

    return $dates->start->format($format) ? : $elapsed->unknown;
}

One thing to note - the retrieved intervals for the supplied filter values do not carry over to the next period. The filter merely displays the resulting value of the supplied periods and does not recalculate the periods to display only the desired filter total.

Usage

For the OP's need of displaying the highest period (as of 2015-02-24).

echo elapsedTimeString('2010-04-26');
/** 4 years ago */

To display compound periods and supply a custom end date (note the lack of time supplied and fictional dates).

echo elapsedTimeString('1920-01-01', '2500-02-24', null, false);
/** 580 years 1 month 23 days ago */

To display the result of filtered periods (ordering of array doesn't matter).

echo elapsedTimeString('2010-05-26', '2012-02-24', null, ['month', 'year']);
/** 1 year 8 months ago */

To display the start date in the supplied format (default Y-m-d) if the limit is reached.

echo elapsedTimeString('2010-05-26', '2012-02-24', '1 year');
/** 2010-05-26 */

There are bunch of other use cases. It can also easily be adapted to accept unix timestamps and/or DateInterval objects for the start, end, or limit arguments.

If you use the php Datetime class you could use:

function time_ago(Datetime $date) {
  $time_ago = '';

  $diff = $date->diff(new Datetime('now'));


  if (($t = $diff->format("%m")) > 0)
    $time_ago = $t . ' months';
  else if (($t = $diff->format("%d")) > 0)
    $time_ago = $t . ' days';
  else if (($t = $diff->format("%H")) > 0)
    $time_ago = $t . ' hours';
  else
    $time_ago = 'minutes';

  return $time_ago . ' ago (' . $date->format('M j, Y') . ')';
}

To improve upon @arnorhs answer I've added in the ability to have a more precise result so if you wanted years, months, days & hours for instance since the user joined.

I've added a new parameter to allow you to specify the number of points of precision you wish to have returned.

function get_friendly_time_ago($distant_timestamp, $max_units = 3) {
    $i = 0;
    $time = time() - $distant_timestamp; // to get the time since that moment
    $tokens = [
        31536000 => 'year',
        2592000 => 'month',
        604800 => 'week',
        86400 => 'day',
        3600 => 'hour',
        60 => 'minute',
        1 => 'second'
    ];

    $responses = [];
    while ($i < $max_units && $time > 0) {
        foreach ($tokens as $unit => $text) {
            if ($time < $unit) {
                continue;
            }
            $i++;
            $numberOfUnits = floor($time / $unit);

            $responses[] = $numberOfUnits . ' ' . $text . (($numberOfUnits > 1) ? 's' : '');
            $time -= ($unit * $numberOfUnits);
            break;
        }
    }

    if (!empty($responses)) {
        return implode(', ', $responses) . ' ago';
    }

    return 'Just now';
}

Use This one and you can get the

    $previousDate = '2013-7-26 17:01:10';
    $startdate = new DateTime($previousDate);
    $endDate   = new DateTime('now');
    $interval  = $endDate->diff($startdate);
    echo$interval->format('%y years, %m months, %d days');

Refer this http://ca2.php.net/manual/en/dateinterval.format.php

Want to share php function which results in grammatically correct Facebook like human readable time format.

Example:

echo get_time_ago(strtotime('now'));

Result:

less than 1 minute ago

function get_time_ago($time_stamp)
{
    $time_difference = strtotime('now') - $time_stamp;

    if ($time_difference >= 60 * 60 * 24 * 365.242199)
    {
        /*
         * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365.242199 days/year
         * This means that the time difference is 1 year or more
         */
        return get_time_ago_string($time_stamp, 60 * 60 * 24 * 365.242199, 'year');
    }
    elseif ($time_difference >= 60 * 60 * 24 * 30.4368499)
    {
        /*
         * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 30.4368499 days/month
         * This means that the time difference is 1 month or more
         */
        return get_time_ago_string($time_stamp, 60 * 60 * 24 * 30.4368499, 'month');
    }
    elseif ($time_difference >= 60 * 60 * 24 * 7)
    {
        /*
         * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 7 days/week
         * This means that the time difference is 1 week or more
         */
        return get_time_ago_string($time_stamp, 60 * 60 * 24 * 7, 'week');
    }
    elseif ($time_difference >= 60 * 60 * 24)
    {
        /*
         * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day
         * This means that the time difference is 1 day or more
         */
        return get_time_ago_string($time_stamp, 60 * 60 * 24, 'day');
    }
    elseif ($time_difference >= 60 * 60)
    {
        /*
         * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour
         * This means that the time difference is 1 hour or more
         */
        return get_time_ago_string($time_stamp, 60 * 60, 'hour');
    }
    else
    {
        /*
         * 60 seconds/minute
         * This means that the time difference is a matter of minutes
         */
        return get_time_ago_string($time_stamp, 60, 'minute');
    }
}

function get_time_ago_string($time_stamp, $divisor, $time_unit)
{
    $time_difference = strtotime("now") - $time_stamp;
    $time_units      = floor($time_difference / $divisor);

    settype($time_units, 'string');

    if ($time_units === '0')
    {
        return 'less than 1 ' . $time_unit . ' ago';
    }
    elseif ($time_units === '1')
    {
        return '1 ' . $time_unit . ' ago';
    }
    else
    {
        /*
         * More than "1" $time_unit. This is the "plural" message.
         */
        // TODO: This pluralizes the time unit, which is done by adding "s" at the end; this will not work for i18n!
        return $time_units . ' ' . $time_unit . 's ago';
    }
}

Improvisation to the function "humanTiming" by arnorhs. It would calculate a "fully stretched" translation of time string to human readable text version. For example to say it like "1 week 2 days 1 hour 28 minutes 14 seconds"

function humantime ($oldtime, $newtime = null, $returnarray = false)    {
    if(!$newtime) $newtime = time();
    $time = $newtime - $oldtime; // to get the time since that moment
    $tokens = array (
            31536000 => 'year',
            2592000 => 'month',
            604800 => 'week',
            86400 => 'day',
            3600 => 'hour',
            60 => 'minute',
            1 => 'second'
    );
    $htarray = array();
    foreach ($tokens as $unit => $text) {
            if ($time < $unit) continue;
            $numberOfUnits = floor($time / $unit);
            $htarray[$text] = $numberOfUnits.' '.$text.(($numberOfUnits>1)?'s':'');
            $time = $time - ( $unit * $numberOfUnits );
    }
    if($returnarray) return $htarray;
    return implode(' ', $htarray);
}

Convert [saved_date] to timestamp. Get current timestamp.

current timestamp - [saved_date] timestamp.

Then you can format it with date();

You can normally convert most date formats to timestamps with the strtotime() function.

One option that'll work with any version of PHP is to do what's already been suggested, which is something like this:

$eventTime = '2010-04-28 17:25:43';
$age = time() - strtotime($eventTime);

That will give you the age in seconds. From there, you can display it however you wish.

One problem with this approach, however, is that it won't take into account time shifts causes by DST. If that's not a concern, then go for it. Otherwise, you'll probably want to use the diff() method in the DateTime class. Unfortunately, this is only an option if you're on at least PHP 5.3.

Here I am using custom function for finding the time elapsed since a date time.

echo Datetodays('2013-7-26 17:01:10');

function Datetodays($d) {

        $date_start = $d;
        $date_end = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

        define('SECOND', 1);
        define('MINUTE', SECOND * 60);
        define('HOUR', MINUTE * 60);
        define('DAY', HOUR * 24);
        define('WEEK', DAY * 7);

        $t1 = strtotime($date_start);
        $t2 = strtotime($date_end);
        if ($t1 > $t2) {
            $diffrence = $t1 - $t2;
        } else {
            $diffrence = $t2 - $t1;
        }

        //echo "
".$date_end."  ".$date_start."  ".$diffrence;
        $results['major'] = array(); // whole number representing larger number in date time relationship
        $results1 = array();
        $string = '';

        $results['major']['weeks'] = floor($diffrence / WEEK);
        $results['major']['days'] = floor($diffrence / DAY);
        $results['major']['hours'] = floor($diffrence / HOUR);
        $results['major']['minutes'] = floor($diffrence / MINUTE);
        $results['major']['seconds'] = floor($diffrence / SECOND);

        //print_r($results);
        // Logic:
        // Step 1: Take the major result and transform it into raw seconds (it will be less the number of seconds of the difference)
        // ex: $result = ($results['major']['weeks']*WEEK)
        // Step 2: Subtract smaller number (the result) from the difference (total time)
        // ex: $minor_result = $difference - $result
        // Step 3: Take the resulting time in seconds and convert it to the minor format
        // ex: floor($minor_result/DAY)

        $results1['weeks'] = floor($diffrence / WEEK);
        $results1['days'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['weeks'] * WEEK)) / DAY));
        $results1['hours'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['days'] * DAY)) / HOUR));
        $results1['minutes'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['hours'] * HOUR)) / MINUTE));
        $results1['seconds'] = floor((($diffrence - ($results['major']['minutes'] * MINUTE)) / SECOND));

        //print_r($results1);

        if ($results1['weeks'] != 0 && $results1['days'] == 0) {
            if ($results1['weeks'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' week ago';
            } else {
                if ($results1['weeks'] == 2) {
                    $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' weeks ago';
                } else {
                    $string = '2 weeks ago';
                }
            }
        } elseif ($results1['weeks'] != 0 && $results1['days'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['weeks'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' week ago';
            } else {
                if ($results1['weeks'] == 2) {
                    $string = $results1['weeks'] . ' weeks ago';
                } else {
                    $string = '2 weeks ago';
                }
            }
        } elseif ($results1['weeks'] == 0 && $results1['days'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['days'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['days'] . ' day ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['days'] . ' days ago';
            }
        } elseif ($results1['days'] != 0 && $results1['hours'] != 0) {
            $string = $results1['days'] . ' day and ' . $results1['hours'] . ' hours ago';
        } elseif ($results1['days'] == 0 && $results1['hours'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['hours'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['hours'] . ' hour ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['hours'] . ' hours ago';
            }
        } elseif ($results1['hours'] != 0 && $results1['minutes'] != 0) {
            $string = $results1['hours'] . ' hour and ' . $results1['minutes'] . ' minutes ago';
        } elseif ($results1['hours'] == 0 && $results1['minutes'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['minutes'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['minutes'] . ' minute ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['minutes'] . ' minutes ago';
            }
        } elseif ($results1['minutes'] != 0 && $results1['seconds'] != 0) {
            $string = $results1['minutes'] . ' minute and ' . $results1['seconds'] . ' seconds ago';
        } elseif ($results1['minutes'] == 0 && $results1['seconds'] != 0) {
            if ($results1['seconds'] == 1) {
                $string = $results1['seconds'] . ' second ago';
            } else {
                $string = $results1['seconds'] . ' seconds ago';
            }
        }
        return $string;
    }
?>

Had to do this recently - hope this helps someone. It doesn't cater for every possibility, but met my needs for a project.

https://github.com/duncanheron/twitter_date_format

https://github.com/duncanheron/twitter_date_format/blob/master/twitter_date_format.php

Try one of these repos:

https://github.com/salavert/time-ago-in-words

https://github.com/jimmiw/php-time-ago

I just started using the latter, does the trick, but no stackoverflow-style fallback on exact date when the date in question is too far away, nor is there support for future dates - and the API is a little funky, but at least it works seemingly flawlessly and is maintained...

To find out time elapsed i usually use time() instead of date() and formatted time stamps. Then get the difference between the latter value and the earlier value and format accordingly. time() is differently not a replacement for date() but it totally helps when calculating elapsed time.

example:

The value of time() looks something like this 1274467343 increments every second. So you could have $erlierTime with value 1274467343 and $latterTime with value 1274467500, then just do $latterTime - $erlierTime to get time elapsed in seconds.

You can get a function for this directly form WordPress core files take a look here

http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.6/wp-includes/formatting.php#L2121

function human_time_diff( $from, $to = '' ) {
    if ( empty( $to ) )
        $to = time();

    $diff = (int) abs( $to - $from );

    if ( $diff < HOUR_IN_SECONDS ) {
        $mins = round( $diff / MINUTE_IN_SECONDS );
        if ( $mins <= 1 )
            $mins = 1;
        /* translators: min=minute */
        $since = sprintf( _n( '%s min', '%s mins', $mins ), $mins );
    } elseif ( $diff < DAY_IN_SECONDS && $diff >= HOUR_IN_SECONDS ) {
        $hours = round( $diff / HOUR_IN_SECONDS );
        if ( $hours <= 1 )
            $hours = 1;
        $since = sprintf( _n( '%s hour', '%s hours', $hours ), $hours );
    } elseif ( $diff < WEEK_IN_SECONDS && $diff >= DAY_IN_SECONDS ) {
        $days = round( $diff / DAY_IN_SECONDS );
        if ( $days <= 1 )
            $days = 1;
        $since = sprintf( _n( '%s day', '%s days', $days ), $days );
    } elseif ( $diff < 30 * DAY_IN_SECONDS && $diff >= WEEK_IN_SECONDS ) {
        $weeks = round( $diff / WEEK_IN_SECONDS );
        if ( $weeks <= 1 )
            $weeks = 1;
        $since = sprintf( _n( '%s week', '%s weeks', $weeks ), $weeks );
    } elseif ( $diff < YEAR_IN_SECONDS && $diff >= 30 * DAY_IN_SECONDS ) {
        $months = round( $diff / ( 30 * DAY_IN_SECONDS ) );
        if ( $months <= 1 )
            $months = 1;
        $since = sprintf( _n( '%s month', '%s months', $months ), $months );
    } elseif ( $diff >= YEAR_IN_SECONDS ) {
        $years = round( $diff / YEAR_IN_SECONDS );
        if ( $years <= 1 )
            $years = 1;
        $since = sprintf( _n( '%s year', '%s years', $years ), $years );
    }

    return $since;
}

I think I have a function which should do what you want:

function time2string($timeline) {
    $periods = array('day' => 86400, 'hour' => 3600, 'minute' => 60, 'second' => 1);

    foreach($periods AS $name => $seconds){
        $num = floor($timeline / $seconds);
        $timeline -= ($num * $seconds);
        $ret .= $num.' '.$name.(($num > 1) ? 's' : '').' ';
    }

    return trim($ret);
}

Simply apply it to the difference between time() and strtotime('2010-04-28 17:25:43') as so:

print time2string(time()-strtotime('2010-04-28 17:25:43')).' ago';

I liked Mithun's code, but I tweaked it a bit to make it give more reasonable answers.

function getTimeSince($eventTime)
{
    $totaldelay = time() - strtotime($eventTime);
    if($totaldelay <= 0)
    {
        return '';
    }
    else
    {
        $first = '';
        $marker = 0;
        if($years=floor($totaldelay/31536000))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 31536000;
            $plural = '';
            if ($years > 1) $plural='s';
            $interval = $years." year".$plural;
            $timesince = $timesince.$first.$interval;
            if ($marker) return $timesince;
            $marker = 1;
            $first = ", ";
        }
        if($months=floor($totaldelay/2628000))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 2628000;
            $plural = '';
            if ($months > 1) $plural='s';
            $interval = $months." month".$plural;
            $timesince = $timesince.$first.$interval;
            if ($marker) return $timesince;
            $marker = 1;
            $first = ", ";
        }
        if($days=floor($totaldelay/86400))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 86400;
            $plural = '';
            if ($days > 1) $plural='s';
            $interval = $days." day".$plural;
            $timesince = $timesince.$first.$interval;
            if ($marker) return $timesince;
            $marker = 1;
            $first = ", ";
        }
        if ($marker) return $timesince;
        if($hours=floor($totaldelay/3600))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 3600;
            $plural = '';
            if ($hours > 1) $plural='s';
            $interval = $hours." hour".$plural;
            $timesince = $timesince.$first.$interval;
            if ($marker) return $timesince;
            $marker = 1;
            $first = ", ";

        }
        if($minutes=floor($totaldelay/60))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 60;
            $plural = '';
            if ($minutes > 1) $plural='s';
            $interval = $minutes." minute".$plural;
            $timesince = $timesince.$first.$interval;
            if ($marker) return $timesince;
            $first = ", ";
        }
        if($seconds=floor($totaldelay/1))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 1;
            $plural = '';
            if ($seconds > 1) $plural='s';
            $interval = $seconds." second".$plural;
            $timesince = $timesince.$first.$interval;
        }        
        return $timesince;

    }
}

Wrote my own

function getElapsedTime($eventTime)
{
    $totaldelay = time() - strtotime($eventTime);
    if($totaldelay <= 0)
    {
        return '';
    }
    else
    {
        if($days=floor($totaldelay/86400))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 86400;
            return $days.' days ago.';
        }
        if($hours=floor($totaldelay/3600))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 3600;
            return $hours.' hours ago.';
        }
        if($minutes=floor($totaldelay/60))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 60;
            return $minutes.' minutes ago.';
        }
        if($seconds=floor($totaldelay/1))
        {
            $totaldelay = $totaldelay % 1;
            return $seconds.' seconds ago.';
        }
    }
}