Relative Date

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Relative dates are where, instead of showing the exact date of a post, you can say it was posted “4 days ago”. Tomorrow, this message would say “5 days ago”. This plugin has been designed to be called from your theme (manually or automatically) to display these relative dates, as required. All relative dates are shown up to 2 depths and are not designed to be 100% accurate (due to rounding), but rather to give the reader an idea as to how old something is. Some examples… Something that is 1 year and 2 months and 3 weeks old will be output as “1 year, 2 months”. Something that is 2 year and 0 months and 3 weeks old will be output as “2 years, 3 weeks”. Key features include… Change your theme yourself or automatically convert the dates Set output depth and your own dividers Specify two dates if you wish so you can add your own time range And much, much more! Technical specification… Licensed under GPLv2 (or later) Designed for both single and multi-site installations PHP7 compatible Fully internationalized, ready for translations If you would like to add a translation to his plugin then please head to our Translating WordPress page WCAG 2.0 Compliant at AA level But, most importantly, there are no premium features and no adverts – this is 100% complete and free! Output Formats The dates will be shown in one the following formats, depending on relevance… Years, months Years, weeks Months, weeks Months, days Weeks, days Days, hours Hours, minutes Minutes, seconds Seconds Adding the code to your theme If you’re happier changing your theme then this is definitely the best way to do it as you can tweak the output to just how you’d like it! To use, simply call either get_relative_date or relative_date – the first will return the relative date and the second will output it. No parameters are required and if none are specified then it will simply create a relative date for the current post or page based on how old it is. However, you can specify a Unix format date (all dates specified must be in Unix format). If one is supplied then the difference will be between that and the current date. In most cases you’ll probably use this plugin to display a post time… if ( function_exists( 'get_relative_date' ) ) { echo 'Created ' . get_relative_date( get_the_time( 'U' ) ) . ' ago.'; } There is another parameter that you can use, if you wish to override the default divider (which is a comma). For example… get_relative_date( get_the_time( 'U' ) ) Might produce a result of 3 days, 4 hours ago. Whereas… get_relative_date( get_the_time( 'U' ), ' and ' ) Would produce a result of 3 days and 4 hours ago. Note that you need to specify any spaces as well around the divider that you need. By default, all output has a maximum depth of 2 values – for example, 3 days, 4 hours ago. If you specify a number of 1 or 2 as a parameter, however, you can control this depth. A depth of 1 with the previous example would output 3 days ago. With regard to the sequence of the parameters, it doesn’t matter – you can specify the parameters in any order (up to 2 dates, 1 divider and 1 depth). To actually add this to your theme you’ll need to modify your theme files, for example single.php. Most themes will use get_the_date, get_the_time, the_date or the_time to output dates on a blog. As an example, a theme may have the following… the_time( get_option( 'date_format' ) ); This is getting the default WordPress data format and then outputting the current posts’ created date in this format. To convert to a relative date, you’d replace this with… relative_date()<h3>Using a second date</h3> You can also provide a second date parameter, again in a Unix format date. If this is specified then the output will be the difference between the 2 dates that you’ve provided. For example, the following would give the age of a child born on 1/1/2010, using a comma separator and displaying the output to 2 levels… get_relative_date( strtotime( '1/1/2010' ) , get_the_time( 'U' ) , ', ', '2' )<h3>Show Relative Dates Automatically</h3> If editing your theme isn’t something you’re comfortable with then you can achieve an automatic conversion. Please bear in mind, however, that this will use default depth and divider settings and, depending on how your theme outputs it, the result may not make sense (depending on whether the original call hard-codes any before/after text or passes it as a parameter, as it should do). Anyway, if you want to try it, head into your Administration screen and select Settings -> General. Near the bottom you should find a new option named “Use Relative Dates”. Tick this box and then click on “Save Settings”. Your blog dates should now show as relative dates.