A time_since function for PHP

I found it incredibly difficult to find any form of time_since function in #PHP so to save anyone else the trouble to hunting through hundreds of useless websites here is the function you may want to use, written by Natalie Downe^[1] (you don't want to know how long it took to hunt it down). It takes the input in the form of the unix time stamp.

function time_since($original) {   
    // array of time period chunks
    $chunks = array(
        array(60 * 60 * 24 * 365 , 'year' ),
        array(60 * 60 * 24 * 30 , 'month' ),
        array(60 * 60 * 24 * 7, 'week' ),
        array(60 * 60 * 24 , 'day' ),
        array(60 * 60 , 'hour' ),
        array(60 , 'minute' ),
    );
    
    $today = time(); /* Current unix time */
    $since = $today - $original;
    
    // $j saves performing the count function each time around the loop
    for ($i = 0, $j = count($chunks); $i < $j; $i++) {
        $seconds = $chunks[$i][0];
        $name = $chunks[$i][1];
        
        // finding the biggest chunk (if the chunk fits, break)
        if (($count = floor($since / $seconds)) != 0) {
            // DEBUG print "<!-- It's $name -->n";
            break;
        }
    }
    
    $print = ($count == 1) ? '1 '.$name : "$count {$name}s";
    if ($i + 1 < $j) {
        // now getting the second item
        $seconds2 = $chunks[$i + 1][0];
        $name2 = $chunks[$i + 1][1];
    
        // add second item if it's greater than 0
        if (($count2 = floor(($since - ($seconds * $count)) / $seconds2)) != 0) {
            $print .= ($count2 == 1) ? ', 1 '.$name2 : ", $count2 {$name2}s";
        }
    }
    return $print;
}

I also found a second more compact version from byteinsider^[2] their version (below) takes the input in the form of the MySQL timestamp format (Y-m-d H:i:s) both functions output the same type of thing tho, so its up to you which you use.

function time_since($mysql_timestamp) {
    $names =  array('year','month','day','hour','minute','second');
    $r = time()-strtotime($mysql_timestamp) - date('Z');
    $posted = array(date('Y',$r)-1970,date('n',$r)-1,date('d',$r)-1, date('G',$r)-0,date('i',$r)-0,date('s',$r)-0);
    
    for($n = 0; $n < 5 && $posted[$n] == 0; $n++);
    $output = $posted[$n].' '.$names[$n];
    if($posted[$n] != 1) $output .='s';
    if($n < 5 && $posted[$n+1] != 0) {
        $output .= ' '.$posted[$n+1].' '.$names[$n+1];
        if($posted[$n+1] != 1) $output .='s';
    }
    return $output.' ago';
}