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Simple Alpine.js plugin to display the human-readable distance between a date and now.

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marcreichel/alpine-timeago

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⏱ Alpine TimeAgo ⏱

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").

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🚀 Installation

CDN

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

npm install @marcreichel/alpine-timeago

Add 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();

🪄 Usage

Directive

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.

No suffix

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>

Include seconds

Distances less than a minute are more detailed.

<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }" x-timeago.seconds="date"></span>

Strict

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>

Strict options

The strict mode comes with its own set of modifiers for controlling the output.

Force unit

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)
Adjust rounding method

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)

Magic function

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.

No suffix

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>

Include seconds

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>

Strict

If you do not want the "about [diff]" or "less than [diff]" prefixes, you can use the fourth parameter to provide the " strict" options.

Default
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }"
      x-text="$timeago(date, null, null, { strict: true })"></span>
Unit
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }"
      x-text="$timeago(date, null, null, { strict: true, unit: 'second' })"></span>
Rounding method
<span x-data="{ date: new Date() }"
      x-text="$timeago(date, null, null, { strict: true, roundingMethod: 'floor' })"></span>

Other locales

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,
}));

📄 License

Copyright (c) 2022 Marc Reichel and contributors.

Licensed under the MIT license, see LICENSE for details.