[PHP]: Logic with date differences

Question

Hi,

I'm seeking an elegant solution to change the format of time based on the length of time between now, and a ISO formated date in a DB.

I'd like the output to look something like this

//less than an hour
'X minutes have gone by'
//less than 24 hours
'X hours have gone by'
//greater than 24 hours
ISO date

Here is what I have so far...

$now = date("o-m-d H:i:s")  //now = something like '2009-12-28 16:39:00'

$dateExample = '2009-12 16:37:00'

$timeSpan = round(strtotime($now) - strtotime($dateExample));

if(($timeSpan/60)<=60)
{
  echo $timeSpan." minutes";
}
if(($timeSpan/(60*60))<=24)
{
  echo ($timeSpan/(60*60))." Hours";
}
else
{
  echo $dateExample;
}

The sloppy if statements are really bothering me and I can't seem to figure out a better way to do it....

Answer 1

A little improvement:

$dateExample = '2009-12 16:37:00'

function timepass($dt){
  $dt = (is_int($dt) ? $dt : strtotime($dt));
  $timeSpan = round(time() - $dt);

  if(($timeSpan/60)<=60){
    return $timeSpan." minutes";
  }elseif(($timeSpan/(60*60))<=24){
    return ($timeSpan/(60*60))." hours";
  }else{
    return date('o-m-d H:i:s',$dt);
  }
}

echo timepass($dateExample);

Answer 2

You really can't get rid of the if statements, but if your point is to condense the code, this does the same thing:

function timePassed($date) {
     $diff = time() - strtotime($date);
     return $diff > 86400 ? $date : ($diff > 3600 ? ($diff / 3600).' hours' : ($diff / 60).' minutes');
}

echo timePassed('2009-12-29 16:30:00');

Not sure if that's good for readability, though.

Answer 3

You could simply shuffle the if's into a switch if you're concerned with the layout.

For example:

$now = date("o-m-d H:i:s")  //now = something like '2009-12-28 16:39:00'
$dateExample = '2009-12 16:37:00'
$timeSpan = round(strtotime($now) - strtotime($dateExample));

switch(true) {
    case (($timeSpan/60)<=60): { echo $timeSpan." minutes"; break; }
    case (($timeSpan/(60*60))<=24): { echo ($timeSpan/(60*60))." Hours"; break; }
    default: { echo $dateExample; }
}

That said, this is just syntactic sugar.

Answer 4

If you 're concerned about the code being clear to readers of your library date conversion function, then you might want to consider this way (rewriting the function posted by thephpdeveloper):

function timepass($dt){
    $timeSpan = round(time() - (is_int($dt) ? $dt : strtotime($dt)));
    $hours = intval($timeSpan / SECONDS_PER_HOUR); // define this somewhere
    $minutes = intval($timeSpan / SECONDS_PER_MINUTE); // define this somewhere

    if($hours == 0) {
        return $minutes.' minutes';
    }
    else if($hours < 24) {
        return $hours.' hours';
    }
    else {
        return ''; // your ISO date logic here
    }
}

I don't see how you can get rid of the if, but personally I find this code to be super clear on what the logic for selecting a format to return is and what is the returned value in each case.

Answer 5

Here is how I ended up doing it.

$now = date("o-m-d H:i:s");

$timeSpan = round(strtotime($now) - strtotime($lastCheckIn));

$minuteCheck = round($timeSpan/60);
$hourCheck   = round($timeSpan/(60*60));

if($minuteCheck<=60)
{
  echo $minuteCheck." minutes";
}
else if($hourCheck<=24)
{
    echo $hourCheck." hours";
}
else
{
    echo $lastCheckIn;
}

The whole minute/hour check really makes it much more clear IMO