Documentation

Fast and lightweight date time package that converts given date into "n time ago" format. The package has many cool features and several supported languages.

😎 12 Features

🕐 Parses any given date, no matter it is the future date or the past;
🕑 Has several options that you can use depending on your use case;
🕒 Well tested;
🕓 Supports several languages;
🕔 Easy to contribute a new language support;
🕧 Small codebase;
🕖 Frequent small releases without breaking changes;
🕗 Can parse Unix timestamp;
🕘 Can parse date time string in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format;
🕙 Can parse time from time.Time GO package;
🕚 All the changes and features are written in the CHANGELOG.mdopen in new window;
🕛 Well documented package;

⚙️️ Configurations

We can set package configurations with SetConfig function that accepts Config structure.

Language

Optionally you can set the language in your application.

Default value is "en"

import . "github.com/SerhiiCho/timeago"

func main() {
    SetConfig(Config{
        Language: "ru",
    })
}

Location

Optionally you can set the location in your application. The functionality is going to be the same, but with 1 exception. In the absence of time zone information, package interprets a time as UTC; With location configuration it interprets the time as in the given location.

There is no default value for this option.

import . "github.com/SerhiiCho/timeago"

func main() {
    SetConfig(Config{
        Location: "Europe/Kiev",
    })
}

Please make sure that timezone configuration is correct for your location. It is very important for displaying the correct datetime.

Overwrite translations

There are cases when you want to replace certain words with specific ones. For example you might want to replace "days" with "d" to get "4 d ago". You can do it with by setting specific configurations for each language. Let's see the example where we want to overwrite words for English language:

import . "github.com/SerhiiCho/timeago"

func main() {
    SetConfig(Config{
        Translations: []Translations{
            {
                Language: "en",
                Translations: map[string]string{
                    "days": "d",
                    "day": "d",
                    "weeks": "w",
                    "week": "w",
                    "ago": "",
                }
            }
        }
    })
}

After this configuration, instead of getting, for example, 4 days ago you'll get 4 d and instead of 1 week ago you'll get 1 w. For other languages it's pretty much the same thing:

import . "github.com/SerhiiCho/timeago"

func main() {
    SetConfig(Config{
        Translations: []Translations{
            {
                Language: "ru",
                Translations: map[string]string{
                    "день": "д",
                    "дня": "д",
                    "дней": "д",
                    "назад": "",
                }
            }
        }
    })
}

With this configurations, you'll get 5 д instead of 5 дней назад.

You can find the full list of words that you can overwrite in langs/ directory in the root of the project.

🚩 Supported languages

This package supports multiple languages. You can easily contribute your own language. Take a look at already supported languages:

Flag	Language	Code (ISO 639-1)
🇬🇧	English	en
🇷🇺	Russian	ru
🇺🇦	Ukrainian	uk
🇳🇱	Dutch	nl

🤲 Options

As the seconds argument Parse() method excepts strings. Here is an example of passed option.

Example with one option

currentTime := time.Now()
hourAgo := currentTime.Add(-time.Hour)

timeago.Parse(currentTime, "online") // Online
timeago.Parse(currentTime, "justNow") // Just now
timeago.Parse(hourAgo, "noSuffix") // 1 hour

Example with multiple options

currentTime := time.Now()
hourAgo := currentTime.Add(-time.Hour)

timeago.Parse(currentTime, "online", "noSuffix") // Online
timeago.Parse(hourAgo, "online", "noSuffix") // 1 hour

Available options

Option	Description
`online`	Displays Online if date interval withing 60 seconds. For example instead of `13 seconds ago` prints `Online`
`justNow`	Displays Just now if date interval withing 60 seconds. For example instead of `32 seconds ago` prints `Just now`.
`noSuffix`	Removes suffix from datetime result and get for example `5 minutes` instead of `5 minutes ago`.

👏 Usage

Pass the date to timeago.Parse() function. It counts the interval between current datetime and given datetime and returns parsed string in format x time ago. The package can work not only with dates in the past but future dates as well. The usage is pretty straight forward.

Allowed types

Method timeago.Parse() excepts different types of datetime:

int Unix timestamp
time.Time Type from Go time package
string Datetime string in format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

Any other type will trigger a panic.

timeago.Parse("2019-10-23 10:46:00") // string date
timeago.Parse(time.Now()) // time.Time
timeago.Parse(1642607826) // Unix timestamp

Usage with the date in the past

pastDate := time.Now().Add(-time.Hour)

res := timeago.Parse(pastDate)

fmt.Println(res) // 1 hour ago

Usage with the date in the future

pastDate := time.Now().Add(time.Hour * 2)

res := timeago.Parse(pastDate)

fmt.Println(res) // 2 hours

🇸🇿 Contribute translation

You can contribute a language support in 4 simple steps. All you need to do is to copy/paste 2 files and change them to match the language that you want to add.

Finally, add 1 line to README.md file and 1 rule to a rules.go. Here is my commitopen in new window for supporting Dutch language that shows changes that I did to add the support. It's pretty straightforward. Waiting for you PR 😉.

Step 1. Add translation file

Translation files live in langs directory. Each translation file is pretty simple JSON object. Here's the example of en.json.

{
    "Ago": "ago",
    "Online": "Online",
    "JustNow": "Just now",
    "Second": "second",
    "Seconds": "seconds",
    "Minute": "minute",
    "Minutes": "minutes",
    "Hour": "hour",
    "Hours": "hours",
    "Day": "day",
    "Days": "days",
    "Week": "week",
    "Weeks": "weeks",
    "Month": "month",
    "Months": "months",
    "Year": "year",
    "Years": "years"
}

Some languages (like Russian) have multiple plural forms of the word. For example English has only second and seconds, but Russian language has 3 types секунда, секунд and секунды. For these cases we can add additional translation for seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Here is the example of ru.json.

{
    "Ago": "назад",
    "Online": "В сети",
    "JustNow": "Только что",
    "Second": "секунда",
    "Seconds": "секунды",
    "SecondsSpecial": "секунд",
    "Minute": "минута",
    "Minutes": "минуты",
    "MinutesSpecial": "минут",
    "Hour": "час",
    "Hours": "часа",
    "HoursSpecial": "часов",
    "Day": "день",
    "Days": "дня",
    "DaysSpecial": "дней",
    "Week": "неделя",
    "Weeks": "недели",
    "WeeksSpecial": "недель",
    "Month": "месяц",
    "Months": "месяца",
    "MonthsSpecial": "месяцев",
    "Year": "год",
    "Years": "года",
    "YearsSpecial": "лет"
}

You can see that it has SecondsSpecial, MinutesSpecial, HoursSpecial, DaysSpecial, WeeksSpecial and YearsSpecial keys. Those are responsible for special age cases.

Step 2. Add language rules

All rules for each language is defined in getRules function in rules.go file. Rule is just a set of conditions that define when to apply singular form and when to apply plural form.

Here is the example for English rules:

func getRules(number, lastDigit int) map[string]Rule {
	return map[string]Rule{
		"en": {
			Single: number == 1,
			Plural: number > 1 || number == 0,
		},
	}
}

We'll use singular form when number is equal to 1, and plural if number is more than 1 or number is 0. You can easily write your own rules for your language.

Step 3. Add tests

Tests for languages live in tests directory. Each language has it's own file. The easies way to add tests for your language is to copy paste one of the tests and change it to match your language.

Step 4. Add info to README

Add a line to README.md file. README.md file has section "Supported languages"open in new window where you need to add your language. For example for Dutch language I've added this line:

| 🇳🇱 | Dutch | nl |

🚀 Quick Start

go get -u github.com/SerhiiCho/timeago

# Documentation

# 😎 12 Features

# ⚙️️ Configurations

# Language

# Location

# Overwrite translations

# 🚩 Supported languages

# 🤲 Options

# Example with one option

# Example with multiple options

# Available options

# 👏 Usage

# Allowed types

# Usage with the date in the past

# Usage with the date in the future

# 🇸🇿 Contribute translation

# Step 1. Add translation file

# Step 2. Add language rules

# Step 3. Add tests

# Step 4. Add info to README

# 🚀 Quick Start