[PHP]: Logic with date differences

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 $dateExampl开发者_运维技巧e;
}

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

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);

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.

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.

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.

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