Fuzzy Dates in PHP

Mar 24, 2010 Created

Ever need to provide a fuzzy date using PHP for your web app? Heres a simple snippet that will do just that.

<?php

function fuzzy_date($timestamp)
{
  $myDays = array("Sun", "Mon", "Tues", "Wed", "Thurs", "Fri", "Sat");
  if( preg_match("/[-\/:]/", $timestamp) )
    $timestamp = strtotime($timestamp);

  if($timestamp > time())
    // All future dates
    return date('m/d/y', $timestamp);
  elseif($timestamp >= mktime(0,0,0))
    // Today
    return 'Today';
  elseif($timestamp >= mktime(0,0,0) - 86400) 
    // Yesterday
    return 'Yesterday';
  elseif($timestamp >= mktime(0,0,0) - 86400*7)
    // Within 7 days
    return $myDays[date('w', $timestamp)];
  elseif($timestamp >= mktime(0,0,0,1,1))
    // Within 1 year
    return date('M d', $timestamp);
  else
    // Older than 1 year
    return date('m/d/y', $timestamp);
}

// Run it for the past month
foreach(range(0,31) as $day) printf("%s<br/>", fuzzy_date(time() - ($day * 86400)));
  
?>

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