TimeAgoInWords

Warning

This is just a proof-of-concept gem. Please review the following production-ready suggestions i have for you:

Rails apps

You can use classic Rails time ago in words

time_ago_in_words(Time.now - 60*60*2) + ' ago'
#=> "about 2 hours ago"

# Note that all these returns the same
distance_of_time_in_words(Time.now, 15.seconds.from_now, include_seconds: true)
distance_of_time_in_words(Time.now, 15.seconds.ago, include_seconds: true)
time_ago_in_words(15.seconds.from_now, include_seconds: true)
#=> "less than 20 seconds"

For localization or changing the words to be used, look at this file

Non-Rails apps

Same as before but you will need some explicit requires:

require 'action_view'
require 'action_view/helpers'
include ActionView::Helpers::DateHelper
time_ago_in_words(Time.now - 60*60*2) + ' ago'
#=> "about 2 hours ago"

# If you need to take advantage of Numeric ActiveSupport extensions:
require 'active_support/core_ext/numeric/time'
time_ago_in_words(Time.now - 2.hours) + ' ago'
#=> "about 2 hours ago"
# note that (Time.now - 2.hours) == (2.hours.ago)

Web apps, client side:

If you are programming for the web and don't want to mess your caching strategies then client-side update libraries came to your rescue:

Name	Pure Javascript + Rails integration	jQuery library	jQuery + Rails integration
37signals Local Time	local_time	smart-time-ago	timeago-rails
Smart Time Ago		smart-time-ago	timeago-rails
Timeago		jquery-timeago	rails-timeago

dotiw

If you are looking for results that looks like this

    "1 year, 2 months, 4 hours, 5 minutes, and 6 seconds"

There is also time-lord if you want to look around

require 'time-lord'
1.hour.ago.to_i                     #=> -3600
200.minutes.ago.to_words            #=> "3 hours ago"
(200.years + 400.days).ago.to_words #=> "201 years ago"
1.hour.ago.to_range                 #=> 1379701707..1379705307

If you are working in the opposite direction chronic natural language date parsing to the rescue.

require 'chronic' #gem install chronic
Chronic.parse("1 year from now").year #=> 2014

The Javascript version of chronic is date and can be used within your browser (client-side) or nodejs (server-side).

Description

Humanize elapsed time from some Time instance to Time.now, e.g. '2 hours and 1 minute ago'

This gem provides slightly different approach to the others but still needs some work to be production-ready, check TODO section.

Installation

$ gem install time_ago_in_words or add to your Gemfile this line: gem 'time_ago_in_words' then run bundle install

Usage

Just require 'time_ago_in_words' and then call Time#ago_in_words method:

require 'time_ago_in_words'

# Comparing from now:
(Time.now - 10).ago_in_words #=> "10 seconds ago"
(Time.now - 1).ago_in_words  #=> "1 second ago"
(Time.now - 60).ago_in_words #=> "1 minute ago"
(Time.now - 63).ago_in_words #=> "1 minute and 3 seconds ago"

# This is my current time so you can compare
Time.now #=> 2013-03-06 02:19:23 -0300

Time.local(1981,03,03,20,30,40).ago_in_words #=> "690 days and 5 hours ago"
Time.local(2013,03,03,20,30,40).ago_in_words #=> "2 days and 5 hours ago"
Time.local(2013,03,04,20,30,40).ago_in_words #=> "1 day and 5 hours ago"
Time.local(2013,03,05,20,30,40).ago_in_words #=> "5 hours and 48 minutes ago"
Time.local(2013,03,05,21,13,40).ago_in_words #=> "5 hours and 5 minutes ago"
Time.local(2013,03,06,00,30,40).ago_in_words #=> "1 hour and 48 minutes ago"
Time.local(2013,03,06,01,11,40).ago_in_words #=> "1 hour and 7 minutes ago"
Time.local(2013,03,06,01,27,40).ago_in_words #=> "51 minutes and 43 seconds ago"
Time.local(2013,03,06,02,19,20).ago_in_words #=> "3 seconds ago"

Contributing

Fork it.
Make your feature addition or bug fix and create your feature branch.
Update the Change Log.
Add specs/tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, create a new Pull Request.
Check that your pull request passes the build.

TODO

Add DateTime support. Currently only available for Time objects.
Add "N months ago"
Add "N years ago"
Add "N decades ago"
Add "N centuries ago"
Add more rspec Examples
Implement Time mocking for testing, instead of abusing Time.now on spec
Extract time_ago_in_words and implement that alternative precision syntax, e.g. "less than a minute ago"

License

Released under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for further details.

Links