php relative time problems - php

Question

I have this function to work out the relative time that has elapsed since a certain date,
function nicetime($date) {
if(empty($date)) {
return "No date provided";
}
$periods = array("second", "minute", "hour", "day", "week", "month", "year", "decade");
$lengths = array("60","60","24","7","4.35","12","10");
$now = time();
$unix_date = strtotime($date);
// check validity of date
if(empty($unix_date)) {
return "Bad date";
}
// is it future date or past date
if($now > $unix_date) {
$difference = $now - $unix_date;
$tense = "ago";
} else {
$difference = $unix_date - $now;
$tense = "from now";
}
for($j = 0; $difference >= $lengths[$j] && $j < count($lengths)-1; $j++) {
$difference /= $lengths[$j];
}
$difference = round($difference);
if($difference != 1) {
$periods[$j].= "s";
}
return "$difference $periods[$j] {$tense}";
}
I am passing the function a date as "2011-01-16 12:30", however I am getting bad date returned which means that $unix_date is empty however if I die in the function I get the $date that is passed to the function however it gets return with a ( before it, below is how I am calling the method.
echo nicetime(date('Y:m:d G:i', $a['created_at']))

Answer 1

echo nicetime("2011-01-16 12:30");
works fine for me. I would suggest you ensure
$a['created_at']
is giving you what you thing it is. Maybe try
$dtDate = $a['created_at'];
$strDate = date('Y:m:d G:i', $dtDate );
echo $strDate;
echo nicetime($strDate);
Make sure $strDate is what you think it is.