Facebook/Twitter like time

[Sirupsen]

The other day I wanted to find a function to be able to get times like:

Posted 2 hours ago..

And I found a script to do this for me, and I thought I would share it here, maybe someone else wondered the same but forgot to look it up.

I commented it up quick.

   function cTime($date) { 
    // This makes the time more relevant like:
    // Posted.. 2 hours ago, or 2 minutes ago!
        
        if(empty($date)) { // Checks if there's any date
            return "No date provided";
        }
        
        $periods = array("second", "minute", "hour", "day", "week", "month", "year", "decade");
        $lengths = array("60","60","24","7","4.35","12","10");
        // How long is the different periods?
        
        $now = time();
        
        // is it future date or past date
        if($now > $datee) {
            $difference     = $now - $date;
            $tense          = "ago";
        
        } else { // Future!
            $difference     = $date - $now;
            $tense          = "from now";
        }
        
        for($j = 0; $difference >= $lengths[$j] && $j < count($lengths)-1; $j++) {
            $difference /= $lengths[$j];
        }
        
        $difference = round($difference);
        
        if($difference != 1) {
            $periods[$j].= "s";
        }
        
        return "$difference $periods[$j] {$tense}";
    }