How to show post update time like facebook and twitter?

Question

I am making a notification deck. and rather than displaying the time at which a notification came. I want to show the time passed since the arrival of notification. As it happens in twitter and facebook where they show 32m, 1 hour ago etc.

I want to implement this code is JavaScript/Java.

Any help will be really appreciated.

Answer 1

Check out PrettyDate plugin of jQuery,by John Resig himself

http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-pretty-date/

Answer 2

Subtract the the current time from posting time. The amount of milliseconds left can be used to format a nice '... ago' string.

Some javascript time functions can be found here. Some algorithm that I found (php):

function TimeAgo($datefrom,$dateto=-1)
{
    // Defaults and assume if 0 is passed in that
    // its an error rather than the epoch

    if($datefrom<=0) {
        return "A long time ago";
    }
    if($dateto==-1) {
        $dateto = time();
    }

    // Calculate the difference in seconds betweeen
    // the two timestamps

    $difference = $dateto - $datefrom;

    // If difference is less than 60 seconds,
    // seconds is a good interval of choice

    if($difference < 60)
    {
        $interval = "s";
    }

    // If difference is between 60 seconds and
    // 60 minutes, minutes is a good interval
    elseif($difference >= 60 && $difference<60*60)
    {
        $interval = "n";
    }

    // If difference is between 1 hour and 24 hours
    // hours is a good interval
    elseif($difference >= 60*60 && $difference<60*60*24)
    {
        $interval = "h";
    }

    // If difference is between 1 day and 7 days
    // days is a good interval
    elseif($difference >= 60*60*24 && $difference<60*60*24*7)
    {
        $interval = "d";
    }

    // If difference is between 1 week and 30 days
    // weeks is a good interval
    elseif($difference >= 60*60*24*7 && $difference <
    60*60*24*30)
    {
        $interval = "ww";
    }

    // If difference is between 30 days and 365 days
    // months is a good interval, again, the same thing
    // applies, if the 29th February happens to exist
    // between your 2 dates, the function will return
    // the 'incorrect' value for a day
    elseif($difference >= 60*60*24*30 && $difference <
    60*60*24*365)
    {
        $interval = "m";
    }

    // If difference is greater than or equal to 365
    // days, return year. This will be incorrect if
    // for example, you call the function on the 28th April
    // 2008 passing in 29th April 2007. It will return
    // 1 year ago when in actual fact (yawn!) not quite
    // a year has gone by
    elseif($difference >= 60*60*24*365)
    {
        $interval = "y";
    }

    // Based on the interval, determine the
    // number of units between the two dates
    // From this point on, you would be hard
    // pushed telling the difference between
    // this function and DateDiff. If the $datediff
    // returned is 1, be sure to return the singular
    // of the unit, e.g. 'day' rather 'days'

    switch($interval)
    {
        case "m":
            $months_difference = floor($difference / 60 / 60 / 24 /
            29);
            while (mktime(date("H", $datefrom), date("i", $datefrom),
            date("s", $datefrom), date("n", $datefrom)+($months_difference),
            date("j", $dateto), date("Y", $datefrom)) < $dateto)
            {
                $months_difference++;
            }
            $datediff = $months_difference;

            // We need this in here because it is possible
            // to have an 'm' interval and a months
            // difference of 12 because we are using 29 days
            // in a month

            if($datediff==12)
            {
                $datediff--;
            }

            $res = ($datediff==1) ? "$datediff month ago" : "$datediff
months ago";
            break;

        case "y":
            $datediff = floor($difference / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365);
            $res = ($datediff==1) ? "$datediff year ago" : "$datediff
years ago";
            break;

        case "d":
            $datediff = floor($difference / 60 / 60 / 24);
            $res = ($datediff==1) ? "$datediff day ago" : "$datediff
days ago";
            break;

        case "ww":
            $datediff = floor($difference / 60 / 60 / 24 / 7);
            $res = ($datediff==1) ? "$datediff week ago" : "$datediff
weeks ago";
            break;

        case "h":
            $datediff = floor($difference / 60 / 60);
            $res = ($datediff==1) ? "$datediff hour ago" : "$datediff
hours ago";
            break;

        case "n":
            $datediff = floor($difference / 60);
            $res = ($datediff==1) ? "$datediff minute ago" :
"$datediff minutes ago";
            break;

        case "s":
            $datediff = $difference;
            $res = ($datediff==1) ? "$datediff second ago" :
"$datediff seconds ago";
            break;
    }
    return $res;
}