How to view how old something is

Say I have some posts and they all have the time they were submitted.

Now what I want to do is check how long ago they were posted in minutes. For example post 1 was posted 40 minutes ago and post 2 was posted 479 minutes ago and so on…

And of course I would run that $data array in a loop but for the time being its understandable. And also the time includes a timestamp so instead of just the time it includes the date and time.

php:

$data = ["POST1"=>"3:10PM","POST2"=>"3:40PM","POST3"=>"4:20PM","POST4"=>"5:15PM"]

html:

<div>
<p><?php echo $data[0] ?><p>
</div>

Solution

Here is what would help you:

<?php

function time_elapsed_string($datetime, $full = false) {
    $now = new DateTime;
    $ago = new DateTime($datetime);
    $diff = $now->diff($ago);

    $diff->w = floor($diff->d / 7);
    $diff->d -= $diff->w * 7;

    $string = array(
        'y' => 'year',
        'm' => 'month',
        'w' => 'week',
        'h' => 'hour',
        'i' => 'minute',
        's' => 'second',
    );
    foreach ($string as $k => &$v) {
        if ($diff->$k) {
            $v = $diff->$k . ' ' . $v . ($diff->$k > 1 ? 's' : '');
        } else {
            unset($string[$k]);
        }
    }

    if (!$full) $string = array_slice($string, 0, 1);
    return $string ? implode(', ', $string) . ' ago' : 'just now';
}

$date = date_parse_from_format('Y-d-m H:i:s', '2014-02-05 5:22:35');
$unixTimestamp = mktime(
    $date['hour'], $date['minute'], $date['second'],
    $date['month'], $date['day'], $date['year']
);

echo time_elapsed_string(date('Y-m-d H:i:s',$unixTimestamp), false);

and here is a working fiddle for you.