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Calculate "time ago" - time that passed since a DateTime

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Join Date: Nov 2007

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Calculate "time ago" - time that passed since a DateTime

Jun 1st, 2008

I've been searching like crazy for this but can't find anything in C#/VB.NET.

I want to show off a DateTime as a "x days x hours x minutes x seconds ago" string, so I'm looking for a function that calculates the time difference between a DateTime and the current date and time, and shows it in that nice string that you can see everywhere around the web these days.

Preferably something like what geekpedia.com has on its frontpage. Note that it always shows the two most relevant time objects at once. For example for the newer posting it shows "17 hours, 31 minutes ago" and for the older ones it shows "3 days, 19 hours ago" -- it doesn't keep showing minutes, seconds, unless relevant.

If anyone happens to have a C#/VB.NET function for this, it will be much appreciated.

Thanks!

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Join Date: Aug 2006

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Re: Calculate "time ago" - time that passed since a DateTime

Jun 2nd, 2008

Here you are

 Help with Code Tags 
 c# Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(GetDifferenceDate(new DateTime(2008, 11, 25, 10, 30, 2), 
                new DateTime(2008, 6, 2, 6, 3, 5)));
        }
 
        static string GetDifferenceDate(DateTime date1, DateTime date2)
        {
            if (DateTime.Compare(date1, date2) >= 0)
            {
                TimeSpan ts = date1.Subtract(date2);
                return string.Format("{0} days, {1} hours, {2} minutes, {3} seconds", 
                    ts.Days, ts.Hours, ts.Minutes, ts.Seconds);
            }
            else
                return "Not valid";
        }
static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(GetDifferenceDate(new DateTime(2008, 11, 25, 10, 30, 2), 
                new DateTime(2008, 6, 2, 6, 3, 5)));
        }

        static string GetDifferenceDate(DateTime date1, DateTime date2)
        {
            if (DateTime.Compare(date1, date2) >= 0)
            {
                TimeSpan ts = date1.Subtract(date2);
                return string.Format("{0} days, {1} hours, {2} minutes, {3} seconds", 
                    ts.Days, ts.Hours, ts.Minutes, ts.Seconds);
            }
            else
                return "Not valid";
        }

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Join Date: Nov 2007

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Re: Calculate "time ago" - time that passed since a DateTime

Jun 3rd, 2008

Thanks a lot!

This code is so much simpler than similar functions I've seen for other languages (such as PHP.) Guess we owe it to the versatility of the DateTime class.