Convert Standard Date to Current Time in Hours/Mins/ - php

Question

Say I have a date function that produces
the output: 2011-10-03
PHP:
$todayDt = date('Y-m-d');
Anyway to get this date to instead show 2 days 1 hour ago

Answer 1

This function might be of some use. You might want to refine the check for months a bit, but this is just a quick example:
function RelativeTime($iTimestamp, $iLevel = 2)
{
!ctype_digit($iTimestamp)
&& $iTimestamp = strtotime($iTimestamp);
$iSecondsInADay = 86400;
$aDisplay = array();
// Start at the largest denominator
$iDiff = time() - $iTimestamp;
$aPeriods = array(
array('Period' => $iSecondsInADay * 356, 'Label' => 'year'),
array('Period' => $iSecondsInADay * 31, 'Label' => 'month'),
array('Period' => $iSecondsInADay, 'Label' => 'day'),
array('Period' => 3600, 'Label' => 'hour'),
array('Period' => 60, 'Label' => 'minute'),
array('Period' => 1, 'Label' => 'second'),
);
foreach ($aPeriods as $aPeriod)
{
$iCount = floor($iDiff / $aPeriod['Period']);
if ($iCount > 0)
{
$aDisplay[] = $iCount . ' ' . $aPeriod['Label'] . ($iCount > 1 ? 's' : '');
$iDiff -= $iCount * $aPeriod['Period'];
}
}
$iRange = count($aDisplay) > $iLevel
? $iLevel
: count($aDisplay);
return implode(' ', array_slice($aDisplay, 0, $iRange)) . ' ago';
}
And some examples of usage:
echo RelativeTime(time() - 102, 1);
// Will output: 1 minute ago
echo RelativeTime(time() - 2002);
// Will output: 33 minutes 22 seconds ago
echo RelativeTime(time() - 100002002, 6);
// Will output: 3 years 2 months 27 days 10 hours 20 minutes 2 seconds ago
echo RelativeTime('2011-09-05');
// Will output: 30 days 22 hours ago

Answer 2

This is post is just for a solution that does not use the DateTime::diff method. It also uses inputs with greater precision, so be aware of that.
$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$then = '2011-10-03 00:00:00'; // This will calculate the difference
// between now and midnight October 3rd
$nowTime = strtotime($now);
$thenTime = strtotime($then);
$diff = $nowTime - $thenTime;
$secs = $diff % 60;
$diff = intval($diff / 60);
$minutes = $diff % 60;
$diff = intval($diff / 60);
$hours = $diff % 24;
$diff = intval($diff / 24);
$days = $diff;
echo($days . ' days ' . $hours . ' hours ' . $minutes . ' minutes ' . $secs . ' seconds ago');
At the moment I tested it, the output was:
2 days 16 hours 6 minutes 2 seconds ago
If all you want are the days and hours, then you can just choose to echo those two out:
echo($days . ' days ' . $hours . ' hours ago');
2 days 16 hours ago