Wednesday, 28 February, 2018 UTC
Summary
Snippet for a rather popular requirement. Formatting a date in a nice way, using infamous “time ago” function. This is the basic version which I adapt to fit a specific project. To keep it easily customizable to your needs, I haven’t packaged it up.
Just pass a date to it, and function will return one of the seven possible formats:
now- if no more than five seconds elapsedabout a minute ago- in no more than ninety seconds elapsed24 minutes ago- for anything in the last hourToday at 11:19- for todayYesterday at 7:32- for yesterday15. February at 17:45- for dates in the current year23. October 2017. at 0:59- for anything else
Feel free to play with it and add more cases if you need them.
Code const MONTH_NAMES = [ 'January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December' ]; function getFormattedDate(date, prefomattedDate = false, hideYear = false) { const day = date.getDate(); const month = MONTH_NAMES[date.getMonth()]; const year = date.getFullYear(); const hours = date.getHours(); let minutes = date.getMinutes(); if (minutes < 10) { // Adding leading zero to minutes minutes = `0${ minutes }`; } if (prefomattedDate) { // Today at 10:20 // Yesterday at 10:20 return `${ prefomattedDate } at ${ hours }:${ minutes }`; } if (hideYear) { // 10. January at 10:20 return `${ day }. ${ month } at ${ hours }:${ minutes }`; } // 10. January 2017. at 10:20 return `${ day }. ${ month } ${ year }. at ${ hours }:${ minutes }`; } // --- Main function function timeAgo(dateParam) { if (!dateParam) { return null; } const date = typeof dateParam === 'object' ? dateParam : new Date(dateParam); const DAY_IN_MS = 86400000; // 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 const today = new Date(); const yesterday = new Date(today - DAY_IN_MS); const seconds = Math.round((today - date) / 1000); const minutes = Math.round(seconds / 60); const isToday = today.toDateString() === date.toDateString(); const isYesterday = yesterday.toDateString() === date.toDateString(); const isThisYear = today.getFullYear() === date.getFullYear(); if (seconds < 5) { return 'now'; } else if (seconds < 60) { return `${ seconds } seconds ago`; } else if (seconds < 90) { return 'about a minute ago'; } else if (minutes < 60) { return `${ minutes } minutes ago`; } else if (isToday) { return getFormattedDate(date, 'Today'); // Today at 10:20 } else if (isYesterday) { return getFormattedDate(date, 'Yesterday'); // Yesterday at 10:20 } else if (isThisYear) { return getFormattedDate(date, false, true); // 10. January at 10:20 } return getFormattedDate(date); // 10. January 2017. at 10:20 }