PHP: date "Yesterday", "Today"

Question

I have a little function that shows latest activity, it grab timestamp in unix format from the db, and then it echo out with this line:

 date("G:i:s j M -Y", $last_access)

Now i would like to replace the date (j M -Y) to Yesterday, and Today if the latest activity was within today, and same goes with Yesterday.

How can i do this?

Answer 1

I would find the timestap for last midnight and the one before it, if $last_access is between the two timestamps, then display yesterday , anything greater than last midnight's timestamp would be today ...

I believe that would be the quicker than doing date arithmetic.

Actually, I just tested this code and it seems to work great:

<?php
    if ($last_access >= strtotime("today"))
        echo "Today";
    else if ($last_access >= strtotime("yesterday"))
        echo "Yesterday";
?>

Answer 2

function get_day_name($timestamp) {

    $date = date('d/m/Y', $timestamp);

    if($date == date('d/m/Y')) {
      $date = 'Today';
    } 
    else if($date == date('d/m/Y',now() - (24 * 60 * 60))) {
      $date = 'Yesterday';
    }
    return $date;
}
print date('G:i:s', $last_access).' '.get_day_name($last_access);

Answer 3

You have to compare day with day, secondes comparaison are totally wrong :

If we are today morning, that means yesterday night is today (by minus 24h) ^^

Here a method I use for Kinoulink ( a french startup ) :

public function formatDateAgo($value)
{
    $time = strtotime($value);
    $d = new \DateTime($value);

    $weekDays = ['Lundi', 'Mardi', 'Mercredi', 'Jeudi', 'Vendredi', 'Samedi', 'Dimanche'];
    $months = ['Janvier', 'Février', 'Mars', 'Avril',' Mai', 'Juin', 'Juillet', 'Aout', 'Septembre', 'Octobre', 'Novembre', 'Décembre'];

    if ($time > strtotime('-2 minutes'))
    {
        return 'Il y a quelques secondes';
    }
    elseif ($time > strtotime('-30 minutes'))
    {
        return 'Il y a ' . floor((strtotime('now') - $time)/60) . ' min';
    }
    elseif ($time > strtotime('today'))
    {
        return $d->format('G:i');
    }
    elseif ($time > strtotime('yesterday'))
    {
        return 'Hier, ' . $d->format('G:i');
    }
    elseif ($time > strtotime('this week'))
    {
        return $weekDays[$d->format('N') - 1] . ', ' . $d->format('G:i');
    }
    else
    {
        return $d->format('j') . ' ' . $months[$d->format('n') - 1] . ', ' . $d->format('G:i');
    }
}

Answer 4

I enhanced Thomas Decaux answer to come up with this

function formatTimeString($timeStamp) {
$str_time = date("Y-m-d H:i:sP", $timeStamp);
$time = strtotime($str_time);
$d = new DateTime($str_time);

$weekDays = ['Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thur', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun'];
$months = ['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', ' May', 'Jun', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sept', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'];

if ($time > strtotime('-2 minutes')) {
  return 'Just now';
} elseif ($time > strtotime('-59 minutes')) {
  $min_diff = floor((strtotime('now') - $time) / 60);
  return $min_diff . ' min' . (($min_diff != 1) ? "s" : "") . ' ago';
} elseif ($time > strtotime('-23 hours')) {
  $hour_diff = floor((strtotime('now') - $time) / (60 * 60));
  return $hour_diff . ' hour' . (($hour_diff != 1) ? "s" : "") . ' ago';
} elseif ($time > strtotime('today')) {
  return $d->format('G:i');
} elseif ($time > strtotime('yesterday')) {
  return 'Yesterday at ' . $d->format('G:i');
} elseif ($time > strtotime('this week')) {
  return $weekDays[$d->format('N') - 1] . ' at ' . $d->format('G:i');
} else {
  return $d->format('j') . ' ' . $months[$d->format('n') - 1] .
  (($d->format('Y') != date("Y")) ? $d->format(' Y') : "") .
  ' at ' . $d->format('G:i');
}

}

It takes in the time stamp as the argument, it adds the year of the time if it was from a different year, etc...

Answer 5

echo date("Y:m:d",strtotime("today"));
echo date("Y:m:d",strtotime("yesterday")); 

Answer 6

If you are going down the road as suggested above, with unix timestamps for today / yesterday, have a look at strtotime , one of the greatest inventions of the 20th (or 21st?) century:

echo strtotime("yesterday"); // midnight
1281391200

echo strtotime("today"); // midnight
1281477600

echo strtotime("today, 1:30");
1281483000

Answer 7

something like:

$now = time();

$last_midnight = $now - ($now % (24*60*60));

if ($last_access >= $last_midnight)
{
 print "Today";
}    
elseif ($last_access >= ($last_midnight-(24*60*60))
{
 Print "Yesterday";
}

Answer 8

here's working function

    function minus_one_day($date){
      $date2 = formatDate4db($date);
      $date1 = str_replace('-', '/', $date2);
      $yesterday = date('Y-m-d',strtotime($date1 . "-1 days"));
      return $yesterday; }

hope work for you...

Answer 9

$today=new DateTime('now');
$yesterday=date($today,strtotime("-1 day"));

Answer 10

date('d.m.Y',strtotime("-1 days"));

Answer 11

we can get Date Difference using diff method of DateTime class.

<?php
    $date1 = new DateTime("2022-07-26");
    $date2 = new DateTime("2022-07-27");
    
    $days = $date2->diff($date1)->format('%r%d');
    
    if($days === 0) {
        return 'Today';
    } else if($days === "-1") {
        return 'yesterday';
    }else {
        return $days . ' days later';
    }
?>

for more details see

1. this answer
2. PHP doc example
3. How to calculate the difference between two dates

Answer 12

Persian type:

function time_elapsed_string($datetime, $full = false) {
    $now = new DateTime;
    $ago = new DateTime($datetime);
    $diff = $now->diff($ago);

    $diff->w = floor($diff->d / 7);
    $diff->d -= $diff->w * 7;

    $string = array(
        'y' => 'سال',
        'm' => 'ماه',
        'w' => 'هفته',
        'd' => 'روز',
        'h' => 'ساعت',
        'i' => 'دقیقه',
        's' => 'ثانیه',
    );
    foreach ($string as $k => &$v) {
        if ($diff->$k) {
            $v = $diff->$k . ' ' . $v . ($diff->$k > 1 ? ' روز' : '');
        } else {
            unset($string[$k]);
        }
    }

    if (!$full) $string = array_slice($string, 0, 1);
    return $string ? implode(', ', $string) . ' قبل' : 'اکنون';
}