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So: The method here receives the original DateTime, and then uses DateTime.Now to calculate the elapsed time.
DateTime.NowGetPrettyDate: The first steps in the GetPrettyDate method take the elapsed days and seconds from the original date.
DateTime, ElapsedStep 5: Here we handle recent dates, in the same day. You can see in parts A - E that there is a chain of conditionals that return pretty strings.
Step 6: Finally, we handle more distant dates. The method here doesn't handle months and years.
C# program that displays pretty dates
using System;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
// Test 90 seconds ago.
Console.WriteLine(GetPrettyDate(DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(-90)));
// Test 25 minutes ago.
Console.WriteLine(GetPrettyDate(DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(-25)));
// Test 45 minutes ago.
Console.WriteLine(GetPrettyDate(DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(-45)));
// Test 4 hours ago.
Console.WriteLine(GetPrettyDate(DateTime.Now.AddHours(-4)));
// Test 15 days ago.
Console.WriteLine(GetPrettyDate(DateTime.Now.AddDays(-15)));
}
static string GetPrettyDate(DateTime d)
{
// 1.
// Get time span elapsed since the date.
TimeSpan s = DateTime.Now.Subtract(d);
// 2.
// Get total number of days elapsed.
int dayDiff = (int)s.TotalDays;
// 3.
// Get total number of seconds elapsed.
int secDiff = (int)s.TotalSeconds;
// 4.
// Don't allow out of range values.
if (dayDiff < 0 || dayDiff >= 31)
{
return null;
}
// 5.
// Handle same-day times.
if (dayDiff == 0)
{
// A.
// Less than one minute ago.
if (secDiff < 60)
{
return "just now";
}
// B.
// Less than 2 minutes ago.
if (secDiff < 120)
{
return "1 minute ago";
}
// C.
// Less than one hour ago.
if (secDiff < 3600)
{
return string.Format("{0} minutes ago",
Math.Floor((double)secDiff / 60));
}
// D.
// Less than 2 hours ago.
if (secDiff < 7200)
{
return "1 hour ago";
}
// E.
// Less than one day ago.
if (secDiff < 86400)
{
return string.Format("{0} hours ago",
Math.Floor((double)secDiff / 3600));
}
}
// 6.
// Handle previous days.
if (dayDiff == 1)
{
return "yesterday";
}
if (dayDiff < 7)
{
return string.Format("{0} days ago",
dayDiff);
}
if (dayDiff < 31)
{
return string.Format("{0} weeks ago",
Math.Ceiling((double)dayDiff / 7));
}
return null;
}
}
Output
1 minute ago
25 minutes ago
45 minutes ago
4 hours ago
3 weeks ago
Note: Thanks to John Resig for the original code and inspiration. His code is under the MIT license.