Timer Countdown (Confused) - php

Question

Basically, I am trying to make a timer or countdown in PHP. This will take the time saved in the threads (date of post) and then show how long ago that is in comparison to the current time.
Anybody know how to do this?
Code:
<?php foreach($this->updated as $thread){ ?>
<section>
<div class="body">
<?php if($this->threads[$thread]['image']!='') { ?>
<div>
<a href="<?php echo $this->threads[$thread]['image']; ?>">
<img src="<?php echo $this->threads[$thread]['image']; ?>">
</a>
</div>
<?php } ?>
<?php echo $this->threads[$thread]['post']; ?>
</div>
<div class="small text-right">
<?php echo count($this->threads[$thread]['posts']); ?> Replies
|
<?php echo date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $this->threads[$thread]['time']); ?> EST
|
View
</div>
</section>
<?php } ?>
I don't want it to be an exact timer, more like it would say for example "less than a minute ago", "1 minute ago", "2 minutes ago", etc...
I have tried to make 2 different variables and then did $current->diff($date); Then just echo $diff->h for example for the hour. But I was confused by the matter.

Answer 1

You can use DateTime::diff function:
<?php
date_default_timezone_set('Europe/Moscow');
$timestamp = 1421253112;
$date = new DateTime;
$date->setTimestamp($timestamp);
$now = new DateTime;
$interval = $now->diff($date);
echo $interval->format('%i minutes ago');
Output:
7 minutes ago