Friendly

This is a simple plugin for relative time periods for Expression Engine 1.x and 2.x.

Basic usage

My prefered tag usage goes like so:

{exp:jb_friendly entry_date="{entry_date}"}
     This entry was posted <abbr title="{full_date}">{friendly} {direction}</abbr>
{/exp:jb_friendly}

That will generate the date in a friendly format (including handling future/past dates) and wrap the full date in the abbreviation, since (or until) now, and the datetime provided.

If you’d like to do the friendly date between a different period just supply the tag like so:

{exp:jb_friendly entry_date="{comment_date}" relative_date="{entry_date}"}
    This comment was posted <abbr title="{full_date}">{friendly}<abbr> after the article
{/exp:jb_friendly}

Parameters

• Entry Date

  entry_date=“123457890” *required

  The only required tag. The date you want the time since/until. If none is supplied, the plugin will bail out and return an empty string. Supplied unformated.

• Relative Date

  relative_date=“123457890” detaults to now

  Optionally calculate the period between the entry date and another time. If none is supplied the system will calulate the period between now and the entry_date.

• Stop After

  stop_after=“1 month” defaults to “never”

  Because of the wordy nature of the formatting, periods progressivly loose there accuracy the larger they get. Using this tag you can stop the dates turning into words after a set length. The valid options are :

  • stop_after=“1 day”
  • stop_after=“1 week”
  • stop_after=“1 month”
  • stop_after=“1 year”

  When the period is older than that, the tag friendly will naturally become the full date, formated. (Using the default date formatting style, modifyable via the date_format tag (see next))

  If no stop_after param is supplied, the plugin will keep generating wordy periods for all dates.

• Default Full Date Format

  format=”%d/%m/%y” defaults to “%F %d%S, %Y”

  Optionally alter the standard date_format. The default is returns in the form “August 19th, 2010”. Uses the exact same date formatting tags as every other date formatting tag.

Tags

• {friendly}

  The date period in friendly words. (English only at the moment).

• {direction}

  If the time period is in the past, returns “ago”. If it is in the future “to go”. If the time period is longer than the stop_after paramter supplied, the {direction} will return nothing.

• {full_date}

  The entry_date tag in full formated style. ie. “August 19th, 2010”

Support

If you have an issue with this plugin, support is handled either via github : http://github.com/joelbradbury/jb.friendly.ee_addon
or the author’s site : http://joelbradbury.net/code/friendly

Changelog

1.2

Fixed an issue where mis-formatted dates return ridiculous time periods

1.1

Added handling of RFC formatted dates

1.0

First Public Release