Early Christmas Present - Javascript Relative Time

 

So today - instead of shopping and getting in the holiday sprit - I coded. Why? Well because its fun. I ran into an issue that I though I would share. Currently - I'm working a social networking site than run their own home grown Twitter Application. I wanted it to be in a real time - and adjust the timestamps as it performs an AJAX call to see if there any new messages.

I searched near and far for the best javascript relative time - but I couldn't find the best one that I liked. Finally - found one done by Tutorialize, that they used for a Twitter Ticker. I changed it a bit to be able to display the correct date in the format that i wanted and edited the number of days allowed to be displayed before it reverts back to the regular timestamp.

So behold - a early christmas present from Santa "javascript" Claus - I hope that you find good use for it.  It's a bit scrappy - but I would like to hear your comments and feedback.

Merry Christmas!



// usage


var rel = relativeTime("Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:45:33 -0800");


// returns


"One Hour Ago"


// code


function relativeTime(pastTime)


{    
    var origStamp = Date.parse(pastTime);
    var cDate = new Date();
    var currentStamp = cDate.getTime();

    var difference = parseInt((currentStamp - origStamp)/1000);

    if(difference < 0) return false;

    if(difference <= 5)                return "Just now";
    if(difference <= 20)            return "Just Seconds ago";
    if(difference <= 60)            return "A minute ago";
    if(difference < 3600)            return parseInt(difference/60)+" minutes ago";
    if(difference <= 1.5*3600)         return "One hour ago";
    if(difference < 23.5*3600)        return Math.round(difference/3600)+" hours ago";
    if(difference < 1.5*24*3600)    return "One day ago";

    var days = difference / (1.5*24*3600);

    if (days <= 10)
    {
        return Math.round(days) +  " days ago";
    }
    else
    {
        var dateArr = pastTime.split(' ');
        
        
        var t = dateArr[4].split(":");
        var time_format = "";
        if (parseInt(t[0]) > 12)
        {
            var a =  parseInt(t) - 12
            time_format = dateArr[2] + " " + dateArr[1] + " " + a + ":" + t[1] + " PM";
        }
        else
        {
            var first = "";
            if (t[0].substring(0, 1) == "0")
            {
                first = t[0].substring(1, 2);
            }
            else
            {
                first = t[0];
            }
            
            time_format = dateArr[2] + " " + dateArr[1] + " " + first + ":" + t[1] + " AM";
        }

        return time_format;
    }

}