An Alpine.js plugin to return the distance between a given date and now in words (like "3 months ago", "about 2 hours ago" or "in about 5 hours").
Include the following <script> tag in the <head> of your document, just before Alpine.
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@marcreichel/alpine-timeago@latest/dist/alpine-timeago.min.js" defer></script>npm install @marcreichel/alpine-timeagoAdd the x-timeago directive to your project by importing the package before starting Alpine.
import Alpine from 'alpinejs';
import TimeAgo from '@marcreichel/alpine-timeago';
Alpine.plugin(TimeAgo);
Alpine.start();To convert a Date to the human-readable distance from now, add the x-data and x-timeago directives to an element and
pass the date (as a Date or a string in ISO format) to the x-timeago directive. The directive will update the output
every 30 seconds.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-timeago="date"></span>Under the hood the directive is using formatDistanceToNow
from date-fns.
If you do not want the "[diff] ago" suffix or "in [diff]" prefix, you can use the x-timeago.pure modifier.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-timeago.pure="date"></span>Distances less than a minute are more detailed.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-timeago.seconds="date"></span>If you do not want the "about [diff]" or "less than [diff]" prefixes, you can use the x-timeago.strict modifier.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-timeago.strict="date"></span>The strict mode comes with its own set of modifiers for controlling the output.
Use the x-timeago.strict.unit.[unit] modifier with one of the following units to force the unit in the output.
second(e.g.x-timeago.strict.unit.second)minute(e.g.x-timeago.strict.unit.minute)hour(e.g.x-timeago.strict.unit.hour)day(e.g.x-timeago.strict.unit.day)month(e.g.x-timeago.strict.unit.month)year(e.g.x-timeago.strict.unit.year)
By default, the values are rounded using the Math.round algorithm. If you would like to adjust this, use
the x-timeago.rounding.[method] modifier with one of the following methods:
floor(e.g.x-timeago.strict.rounding.floor)ceil(e.g.x-timeago.strict.rounding.ceil)floor(e.g.x-timeago.strict.rounding.round)
As of version 1.3.0 of this package a $timeago magic function is included which will return the human-readable
distance from now.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-text="$timeago(date)"></span>Note: Using the magic function the distance does not get updated automatically. You have to update it yourself if you want to.
If you do not want the "[diff] ago" suffix or "in [diff]" prefix, you can provide true as the second parameter to the
function.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-text="$timeago(date, true)"></span>If you want distances less than a minute to be more detailed, you can provide true as the third parameter to the
function.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-text="$timeago(date, null, true)"></span>If you do not want the "about [diff]" or "less than [diff]" prefixes, you can use the fourth parameter to provide the " strict" options.
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }"
x-text="$timeago(date, null, null, { strict: true })"></span><span x-data="{ date: new Date() }"
x-text="$timeago(date, null, null, { strict: true, unit: 'second' })"></span><span x-data="{ date: new Date() }"
x-text="$timeago(date, null, null, { strict: true, roundingMethod: 'floor' })"></span>If you are using the npm installation method for this package or the ESM distribution, you can use the
TimeAgo.configure() method to provide a different locale from date-fns.
import TimeAgo from '@marcreichel/alpine-timeago';
import {de} from 'date-fns/locale';
Alpine.plugin(TimeAgo.configure({
locale: de,
}));Copyright (c) 2022 Marc Reichel and contributors.
Licensed under the MIT license, see LICENSE for details.