How do I nicely display relative time using VB.NET?

Question

I want to display a "date/time submitted" value much the same way as Stack Overflow does

e.g.* 2 hours ago * 3 days ago * a month ago

I see extensive answers on how to do this in PHP but can someone help me with the VB version?

Answer 1

You need a DateTime structure

you simply substract [now] - [original message time] = difference time

you will need the DateTime.Substract method

Answer 2

First calculate the exact time since submission:

Dim t As TimeSpan = DateTime.Now - submittedTime

Then you decide on what intervals you want to use for displaying the result. For example:

If t.TotalSeconds < 60 Then
   display = "Less than a minute ago"
ElseIf t.TotalMinutes < 60 Then
   display = t.Minutes.ToString() + " minutes ago"
ElseIf ...
   ... and so on
End If

Answer 3

What you're looking for is the TimeSpan structure. This structure stores a span of time (as the name suggests). It is the type returned when you subtract two DateTime structures

Dim start as DateTime = DateTime.Now 
...
' Some time after the start
Dim span = DateTime.Now - start

Answer 4

All the way back on question 11, Jeff posted the code they use here on stackoverflow. It's in c#, but the conversion to vb.net should be pretty easy. There's heaps of other good suggestions in that question too.

Personally, I've used Sam Allen's code to get prettydates before. He modeled it off some code that John Resig wrote, so it's good quality stuff. Once again, c#, but it converts to vb.net pretty easily.

Answer 5

I've posted a blog post to do just this. However it is in C#, but you can easily convert into vb.net http://blog.nirandas.com/post/displaying-time-in-relative-format.aspx