Can my PHP time difference function be improved?

Question

Below is my function that will take a timestamp and tell you the time that has passed from now in the format of 23 days 3 hours 4 minutes 6 seconds

The main problem is on my site I use mysql's DATETIME instead of TIMESTAMP so to use this function I must convert my datetime from mysql to a timestamp and then run it through my function.

So I am curious, is there a better way to do this, on some pages where I have 100 mysql results, PHP must convert 100 dates to timestamps and then run this on 100 of them.

I am just wondering if there is a better performance method, and please don't recommend all the PHP frameworks (zend, etc.)

Appreciate any tips/help

function duration($timestamp) {
    $years = floor($timestamp / (60 * 60 * 24 * 365));
    $timestamp %= 60 * 60 * 24 * 365;
    $weeks = floor($timestamp / (60 * 60 * 24 * 7));
    $timestamp %= 60 * 60 * 24 * 7;
    $days = floor($timestamp / (60 * 60 * 24));
    $timestamp %= 60 * 60 * 24;
    $hrs = floor($timestamp / (60 * 60));
    $timestamp %= 60 * 60;
    $mins = floor($timestamp / 60);
    $secs = $timestamp % 60;
    $str = "";
    if ($years == 1) {
     $str .= "{$years} year ";
    }elseif ($years > 1) {
     $str .= "{$years} yearss ";
    }
    if ($weeks == 1) {
     $str .= "{$weeks} week ";
    }elseif ($weeks > 1) {
     $str .= "{$weeks} weeks ";
    } 
    if ($days == 1) {
     $str .= "{$days} day ";
    }elseif ($days > 1) {
     $str .= "{$days} days ";
    }
    if ($hrs == 1) {
     $str .= "{$hrs} hour ";
    }elseif ($hrs > 1) {
     $str .= "{$hrs} hours ";
    }
    if ($mins == 1) {
     $str .= "{$mins} minute ";
    }elseif ($mins > 1) {
     $str .= "{$mins} minutes ";
    }
    if ($mins < 1 && $secs >= 1) {
     $str .= "{$secs} seconds ";
    }
    return $str;
}

Answer 1

Do take a look at the documentation for the time function at the PHP site. Specially this and this.

Here is a snippet by Aidan Lister that is similar:

/**
 * A function for making time periods readable
 *
 * @author      Aidan Lister <[email protected]>
 * @version     2.0.0
 * @link        http://aidanlister.com/2004/04/making-time-periods-readable/
 * @param       int     number of seconds elapsed
 * @param       string  which time periods to display
 * @param       bool    whether to show zero time periods
 */
function time_duration($seconds, $use = null, $zeros = false)
{
    // Define time periods
    $periods = array (
        'years'     => 31556926,
        'Months'    => 2629743,
        'weeks'     => 604800,
        'days'      => 86400,
        'hours'     => 3600,
        'minutes'   => 60,
        'seconds'   => 1
        );

    // Break into periods
    $seconds = (float) $seconds;
    foreach ($periods as $period => $value) {
        if ($use && strpos($use, $period[0]) === false) {
            continue;
        }
        $count = floor($seconds / $value);
        if ($count == 0 && !$zeros) {
            continue;
        }
        $segments[strtolower($period)] = $count;
        $seconds = $seconds % $value;
    }

    // Build the string
    foreach ($segments as $key => $value) {
        $segment_name = substr($key, 0, -1);
        $segment = $value . ' ' . $segment_name;
        if ($value != 1) {
            $segment .= 's';
        }
        $array[] = $segment;
    }

    $str = implode(', ', $array);
    return $str;
}