iPhone: Convert date string to a relative time stamp

Question

I\'ve got a timestamp as a string like:

Thu, 21 May 09 19:10:09 -0700

and I\'d like to convert it to a relative time stamp like

Answer 1

There are already a lot of answers that come to the same solution but it can't hurt to have choices. Here's what I came up with.

- (NSString *)stringForTimeIntervalSinceCreated:(NSDate *)dateTime
{
    NSDictionary *timeScale = @{@"second":@1,
                                @"minute":@60,
                                @"hour":@3600,
                                @"day":@86400,
                                @"week":@605800,
                                @"month":@2629743,
                                @"year":@31556926};
    NSString *scale;
    int timeAgo = 0-(int)[dateTime timeIntervalSinceNow];
    if (timeAgo < 60) {
        scale = @"second";
    } else if (timeAgo < 3600) {
        scale = @"minute";
    } else if (timeAgo < 86400) {
        scale = @"hour";
    } else if (timeAgo < 605800) {
        scale = @"day";
    } else if (timeAgo < 2629743) {
        scale = @"week";
    } else if (timeAgo < 31556926) {
        scale = @"month";
    } else {
        scale = @"year";
    }

    timeAgo = timeAgo/[[timeScale objectForKey:scale] integerValue];
    NSString *s = @"";
    if (timeAgo > 1) {
        s = @"s";
    } 
    return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d %@%@ ago", timeAgo, scale, s];
}