Calculate relative time in C#

Question

Given a specific DateTime value, how do I display relative time, like:

• 2 hours ago
• 3 days ago
• a month ago

Answer 1

@Jeff

var ts = new TimeSpan(DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks - dt.Ticks);

Doing a subtraction on DateTime returns a TimeSpan anyway.

So you can just do

(DateTime.UtcNow - dt).TotalSeconds

I'm also surprised to see the constants multiplied-out by hand and then comments added with the multiplications in. Was that some misguided optimisation?