How to format time since xxx e.g. “4 minutes ago” similar to Stack Exchange sites

Question

The question is how to format a JavaScript Date as a string stating the time elapsed similar to the way you see times displayed on Stack Overflow.

e.g.<

Answer 1

Here's what I did (the object returns the unit of time along with its value):

function timeSince(post_date, reference)
{
	var reference = reference ? new Date(reference) : new Date(),
		diff = reference - new Date(post_date + ' GMT-0000'),
		date = new Date(diff),
		object = { unit: null, value: null };
	
	if (diff < 86400000)
	{
		var secs  = date.getSeconds(),
			mins  = date.getMinutes(),
			hours = date.getHours(),
			array = [ ['second', secs], ['minute', mins], ['hour', hours] ];
	}
	else
	{
		var days   = date.getDate(),
			weeks  = Math.floor(days / 7),
			months = date.getMonth(),
			years  = date.getFullYear() - 1970,
			array  = [ ['day', days], ['week', weeks], ['month', months], ['year', years] ];
	}

	for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++)
	{
		array[i][0] += array[i][1] != 1 ? 's' : '';

		object.unit  = array[i][1] >= 1 ? array[i][0] : object.unit;
		object.value = array[i][1] >= 1 ? array[i][1] : object.value;
	}

	return object;
}