NSDate+PrettyDate

An Objective-C category to calculate relative time spans between an NSDate object and the current date.

The result is simmilar to the commit times of GitHub, e.g. 2 hours ago.

Installation

Just drop the files NSDate+PrettyDate.m and NSDate+PrettyDate.h in your project. If you like, you can also put the german translation folder de.lproj in your project.

Example

ViewController.m:

#import "NSDate+PrettyDate.h"

- (void) viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    NSDate *date = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:-3615];

    self.label.text = [date prettyDate]; // results "1 hour ago"
    //self.label.text = [date prettyDate2]; // results "1 hour ago and 15 seconds ago"
}

Localization

To localize the resulting strings, do the following steps:

1. Add a file Localizable.strings to your project. (File>New>File... Resources>Strings File)

2. Add the desired language to your project (Click on Project>Localizations> +)

3. Click on the Localizable.strings file, click Localize in the File inspector.

4. Add the following contents:

   // PrettyDate
   "future date"    = "zukünftiges Datum";
   "just now"       = "in diesem Moment";
   "a minute ago"   = "vor einer Minute";
   "last hour"      = "letzte Stunde";
   "yesterday"      = "gestern";
   "last week"      = "letzte Woche";
   "last month"     = "letzten Monat";
   "last year"      = "letztes Jahr";
   
   "%d seconds ago" = "vor %d Sekunden";
   "%d minutes ago" = "vor %d Minuten";
   "%d hours ago"   = "vor %d Stunden";
   "%d days ago"    = "Vor %d Tagen";
   "%d weeks ago"   = "vor %d Wochen";
   "%d months ago"  = "vor %d Monaten";
   "%d years ago"   = "vor %d Jahren";
   
   // PrettyDate2
   "%d seconds ago ..."            = "vor %d Sekunden ...";
   "a few seconds ago"             = "vor ein paar Sekunden";
   
   "%d minutes and %d seconds ago" = "vor %d Minuten und %d Sekunden";
   "one minute and %d seconds ago" = "vor einer Minute und %d Sekunden";
   
   "%d hours and %d minutes ago"   = "vor %d Stunden und %d Minuten";
   "one hour and %d minutes ago"   = "vor einer Stunde und %d Minuten";
   
   "%d days and %d hours ago"      = "vor %d Tagen und %d Stunden";
   "one day and %d hours ago"      = "vor einem Tag und %d Stunden";
   
   "%d weeks and %d days ago"      = "vor %d Wochen und %d Tagen";
   "one week and %d days ago"      = "vor einer Woche und %d Tagen";
   
   "%d months and %d days ago"     = "vor %d Monaten und %d Tagen";
   "one month and %d days ago"     = "vor einem Monat und %d Tagen";
   
   "%d years and %d months ago"    = "vor %d Jahren und %d Monaten";
   "one year and %d months ago"    = "vor einem Jahr und %d Monaten";
   

Note

The german translation is already included in the NSDate+PrettyDate Project.

Demo Style 1

Demo Style 2

License

MIT. do what you want.

Changelog

0.1 - 2013-05-24

• #1: Input: some date in future, output: "just now"

  Handle future dates correctly. Thanks to nrgbodya

• fixed unittests and documentation