timeDiffInWords - a function to keep handy

Posted by Felix Geisendörfer, on Apr 29, 2006 - in PHP & CakePHP » Views & Helpers

Deprecated post

The authors of this post have marked it as deprecated. This means the information displayed is most likely outdated, inaccurate, boring or a combination of all three.

Policy: We never delete deprecated posts, but they are not listed in our categories or show up in the search anymore.

Comments: You can continue to leave comments on this post, but please consult Google or our search first if you want to get an answer ; ).

Today I've been looking in my old projects for a function like this for about 20 minutes until I decided to code it again. The problem is, sometimes you need a php functions to convert a time difference (in seconds) into words. Since I think it's a function that could be useful to other folks as well, and I need a place to store it, I'll put it in here:

php
  1. function __timeDiffInWords($time)
  2. {
  3.   $days = ($time / (1 * 60 * 60 * 24));
  4.   $time = $time % (1 * 60 * 60 * 24);
  5.   $hours = ($time / (1 * 60 * 60));
  6.   $time = $time % (1 * 60 * 60);
  7.   $minutes = ($time / (1 * 60));
  8.   $time = $time % (1 * 60);
  9.   $seconds = $time;
  10.  
  11.   $timeRtrn = array();   
  12.  
  13.   if ($days==1)
  14.     array_push($timeRtrn, '1 day');
  15.   else if ($days > 1)    
  16.     array_push($timeRtrn, floor($days).' days'); 
  17.  
  18.   if ($hours==1)
  19.     array_push($timeRtrn, '1 hour');
  20.   else if ($hours > 1)     
  21.     array_push($timeRtrn, floor($hours).' hours');     
  22.      
  23.   if ($minutes==1)
  24.     array_push($timeRtrn, '1 minute');
  25.   else if ($minutes > 1)     
  26.     array_push($timeRtrn, floor($minutes).' minutes');
  27.  
  28.   if ($seconds==1)
  29.     array_push($timeRtrn, '1 second');
  30.   else if ($seconds > 1)     
  31.     array_push($timeRtrn, floor($seconds).' seconds');         
  32.  
  33.   return join(', ', $timeRtrn);
  34.    
  35. }
Print this Post | Digg This | Stumble It | Delicious

4 Comments

Daniel Hofstetter on Apr 30, 2006:

What's the difference to TimeHelper::timeAgoInWords()?

Felix Geisendörfer on Apr 30, 2006:

The difference is that TimeHelper::timeAgoInWords() expects to be provided with a datetime in the past or present and tells you the difference between it and the time() now. The time values I deal with are only time Differences in seconds and not absolute unix timestamps. In the moment I was looking at the TimeHelper in search of a function like this I thought about using timeAgoInWords() but since it didn't work as expected right away I dropped the idea of using it. Now that you point it out to me again I realize that I can use something like this as well:

$time->timeAgoInWords(time()+$ptime, 'j/n/y', true);

But the other issue would be that it only works with english. The version of __timeDiffInWords I wrote was in German and I just changed the strings to English for the blog.

AD7six on Apr 30, 2006:

There's a time helper available in more than one language on cakeforge, which *may* address the need for a single (but not English) language time helper. Alternatively, if /app/views/helpers/time.php is (user)defined, you can override the functions, if only to change the language, without tampering with the version shipped with the core.

Felix Geisendörfer on May 01, 2006:

Alright, I stay corrected on this one ; ). At least the function can be considered useful when dealing with non cakephp projects. And I also got a JavaScript version of it which is almost the same, just a little different in the syntax.

Add a comment