README

Library that helps you compute human readable information about dates.

This is especially useful for such cases like:

• Computing time ago - "2 seconds ago", "yesterday"
• Computing time in the future - "within 5 seconds", "tomorrow at 14:00" (in progress)

Features

• Customizable rules and predefined rules (see calculators)
• Smart "yesterday" and "tomorrow" calculations
• Support for translations or any other customer formatter
• Symfony 2 and 3 integration via relative-date-bundle

Installation

composer require wookieb/relative-date

Usage

$formatter = new Wookieb\RelativeDate\Formatters\BasicFormatter();
// You can pick one of calculators. See "calculators" section for details
$calculator = Wookieb\RelativeDate\Calculators\TimeAgoDateDiffCalculator::full();

$date = new \DateTime('2016-01-01 14:00:00');
$now = new \DateTime('2016-01-01 16:00:00'); // not required, defaults to current date
$formatter->format($calculator->compute($date, $now)); // 2 hours ago

Rationale

I've created this library because I was tired of tons of very simplistic relative date calculators that compute a result based on very strict, immutable rules. That's why relative-date consists of parts that allows you to redefine the whole logic of relative date computation that exactly suits to your needs.

You don't need "2 years ago" result since in most cases it's useless? Feel free to pick "upTo2Weeks" calculator and get exactly what you need!

Translation and support for different languages

Translations are supported via TranslatorFormatter.

Symfony users should use relative-date-bundle.

// $translator - get Symfony translator somehow 
$formatter = new Wookieb\RelativeDate\Formatters\TranslatorFormatter($translator);
$calculator = Wookieb\RelativeDate\Calculators\TimeAgoDateDiffCalculator::full();

$date = new \DateTime('2016-01-01 14:00:00');
$now = new \DateTime('2016-01-01 16:00:00');
$formatter->format($calculator->compute($date, $now)); // 2 godziny temu

Calculators

TimeAgoCalculator::full

Computes result in one of the units:

• seconds
• minutes
• hours
• days
• weeks
• months
• years

TimeAgoCalculator::upTo2Weeks

Computes result in one of the units:

• seconds
• minutes
• "yesterday"
• hours
• days
• weeks (up to 14 days)
• full date (if date is older than 14 days)

TimeAgoCalculator::upTo2Days

Computes result in one of the units:

• seconds
• minutes
• "yesterday"
• hours
• full date (if date is older than "yesterday")

Customization

Translator and custom placeholders

By default TranslatorFormatter defines only one placeholder "%count%" for your translations. You can define custom ones, especially useful for more detailed final outputs.

$translator = new TranslatorFormatter($translator);
$translator->registerCustomPlaceholder(
    ['yesterday', 'tomorrow'], // applies only to specific result key names
    '%at%', // placeholder name
    function(DateDiffResult $result) {
        return $result->getRequest()
            ->getDate()
            ->format('H:i');
    }
);

// translation definition
tomorrow: tomorrow at %at%

// usage
$date = new \DateTime('2016-01-01 14:05:00');
$baseDate = new \DateTime('2016-01-02 00:00:00');
$result = $translator->format(TimeAgoCalculator::upTo2Weeks()->compute($date, $baseDate));
$result; // yesterday at 14:05

Custom full date format

Every built-in Formatter supports date format string applied to results representing full date.

$format = Wookieb\RelativeDate\Formatters\BasicFormatter::SHORT_FORMAT; // Y-m-d
$formatter = new Wookieb\RelativeDate\Formatters\BasicFormatter($format);
$calculator = Wookieb\RelativeDate\Calculators\TimeAgoDateDiffCalculator::upTo2Weeks();

$date = new \DateTime('2016-01-01 14:00:00');
$now = new \DateTime('2016-03-01 16:00:00');
$formatter->format($calculator->compute($date, $now)); // 2016-01-01
```