TinyAgo.js

TinyAgo.js is a tiny (180 bytes when minified) JavaScript library that converts timestamps into relative time (a.k.a. "time ago").

Usage

The library provides one function ago(), which expects an argument that is a timestamp in milliseconds (such as the return value of the Date.getTime() method), and returns a string with the relative time:

var d = new Date('January 1, 2014');
console.log(ago(d.getTime())); // -> '7 months' (assuming it's August 2014)

As shown in the above example, the function does not return the 'ago' suffix. This is left as an exercise for the reader.

Dates in the future

The function assumes the timestamp is in the past, but with a little wrapper it can also work with future dates:

function agofromnow(v) {
    if (v > Date.now())
        return ago(2 * Date.now() - v) + ' from now';
    else
        return ago(v) + ' ago';
}