Best way to convert DateTime to “n Hours Ago” in SQL

Question

I wrote a SQL function to convert a datetime value in SQL to a friendlier \"n Hours Ago\" or \"n Days Ago\" etc type of message. And I was wondering if there was a better wa

Answer 1

How about this? You could expand this pattern to do "years" messages, and you could put in a check for "1 day" or "1 hour" so it wouldn't say "1 days ago"...

I like the CASE statement in SQL.

drop function dbo.time_diff_message    
GO

create function dbo.time_diff_message (
    @input_date datetime
)
returns varchar(200)    
as    
begin    
declare @msg varchar(200)    
declare @hourdiff int

set @hourdiff = datediff(hour, @input_date, getdate())    
set @msg = case when @hourdiff < 0 then ' from now' else ' ago' end    
set @hourdiff = abs(@hourdiff)    
set @msg = case when @hourdiff > 24 then convert(varchar, @hourdiff/24) + ' days' + @msg
                else convert(varchar, @hourdiff) + ' hours' + @msg
            end

return @msg
end

GO    
select dbo.time_diff_message('Dec 7 1941')