


How Can I Generate Human-Readable Relative Dates and Times from Unix Timestamps in PHP?
Dec 03, 2024 pm 12:59 PMPHP: Generating Relative Date/Time from Timestamps
In PHP, converting Unix timestamps to human-readable relative date/time strings is a common task. However, creating a flexible script to handle both past and future conversions can be challenging.
The following function, time2str, addresses this need by converting timestamps to relative date/time strings like "2 weeks ago" or "after 10 minutes and 15 seconds."
function time2str($ts) { // Convert string timestamp to integer if (!ctype_digit($ts)) { $ts = strtotime($ts); } $diff = time() - $ts; // Handle present, past, and future conversions if ($diff == 0) { return 'now'; } elseif ($diff > 0) { // Past: "X days/weeks/months ago" $day_diff = floor($diff / 86400); switch ($day_diff) { case 0: return relativeMinutes($diff); case 1: return 'Yesterday'; case $day_diff < 7: return "$day_diff days ago"; case $day_diff < 31: return ceil($day_diff / 7) . ' weeks ago'; case $day_diff < 60: return 'last month'; default: return date('F Y', $ts); } } else { // Future: "after X days/weeks/months" $diff = abs($diff); $day_diff = floor($diff / 86400); switch ($day_diff) { case 0: return relativeMinutes($diff, true); case 1: return 'Tomorrow'; case $day_diff < 4: return date('l', $ts); case $day_diff < 7 + (7 - date('w')) : return 'next week'; case ceil($day_diff / 7) < 4: return 'in ' . ceil($day_diff / 7) . ' weeks'; case date('n', $ts) == date('n') + 1: return 'next month'; default: return date('F Y', $ts); } } } // Helper to generate relative minute/second strings function relativeMinutes($diff, $future = false) { if ($diff < 60) { return 'just now'; } else if ($diff < 120) { return '1 minute' . (($future) ? ' ago' : ''); } else { return floor($diff / 60) . ' minutes' . (($future) ? ' ago' : ''); } }
This function handles edge cases such as "just now" and "in 1 minute." It also provides different relative strings for past and future dates, making it flexible for use in various applications.
The above is the detailed content of How Can I Generate Human-Readable Relative Dates and Times from Unix Timestamps in PHP?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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