CFLib.org – Common Function Library Project

Description:
You supply a date/time, and I return a string indicating how long ago that was. e.g. "5 seconds ago", "1 year ago", etc. Useful for displaying "Last Updated" information. Does not look to the future, this is for past events.

Return Values:
Returns a string.

Example:

<cfset then = dateAdd('d',-1,Now())>
Then was #ago(then)#.

Parameters:

Full UDF Source:

/**
 * Displays how long ago something was.
 * 
 * @param dateThen      Date to format. (Required)
 * @return Returns a string. 
 * @author Alan McCollough (amccollough@anthc.org) 
 * @version 1, December 7, 2009 
 */
function ago(dateThen){
  var result = "";
  var i = "";
  var rightNow = Now();
  Do
  {
       i = dateDiff('yyyy',dateThen,rightNow);
       if(i GTE 2){
     result = "#i# years ago";
     break;}
  else if (i EQ 1){
     result = "#i# year ago";
     break;}

       i = dateDiff('m',dateThen,rightNow);
       if(i GTE 2){
     result = "#i# months ago";
     break;}
  else if (i EQ 1){
     result = "#i# month ago";
     break;}

       i = dateDiff('d',dateThen,rightNow);
       if(i GTE 2){
     result = "#i# days ago";
     break;}
  else if (i EQ 1){
     result = "#i# day ago";
     break;}

       i = dateDiff('h',dateThen,rightNow);
       if(i GTE 2){
     result = "#i# hours ago";
     break;}
  else if (i EQ 1){
     result = "#i# hour ago";
     break;}

       i = dateDiff('n',dateThen,rightNow);
       if(i GTE 2){
     result = "#i# minutes ago";
     break;}
  else if (i EQ 1){
     result = "#i# minute ago";
     break;}

       i = dateDiff('s',dateThen,rightNow);
       if(i GTE 2){
     result = "#i# seconds ago";
     break;}
  else if (i EQ 1){
     result = "#i# second ago";
     break;}
  else{
    result = "less than 1 second ago";
     break;
     }
  }
  While (0 eq 0);
  return result;
}