Automatic user readable time interval

Question

I would like to express some time intervals in a humanoid format. I was looking for a library that could automatically select the correct unit size. Intervals will range from milliseconds to several weeks. Something like

• 0.2sec
• 2 a.m.
• 4 days
• ...

I know that I can manually check the size of the argument and then convert it, but before reinventing the wheel, I wanted to ask if there is a (standard) library for this.

• TimeUnit does the conversion, but no argument size information
• a Joda-Time Duration exactly matches what I need, but I did not find much about the view (but for formatting ISO8601 ReadableDuration )

Edit

My entry in nanoseconds and exit as described above.

Answer 1

Check PrettyTime

PrettyTime is an OpenSource time formatting library. Fully customizable, PrettyTime creates user-friendly relative timestamps, similar to those seen on Digg, Twitter and Facebook. Just start "right now!" and in more than 18 languages!

Example

PrettyTime p = new PrettyTime(); System.out.println(p.format(new Date())); //prints: "right now" PrettyTime t = new PrettyTime(new Date(3155692597470L * 3L)); t.format(new Date(0)); //3 centuries ago