ago 0.0.8

ago: Human readable timedeltas

What are human readable timedeltas?

ago.py makes customizable human readable timedeltas, for example:

Testing past tense:

Russell commented 1 year, 127 days, 16 hours ago
You replied 1 year, 127 days ago

Testing future tense:

Program will shutdown in 2 days, 3 hours, 27 minutes
Job will run 2 days, 3 hours from now

How to install

There are a number of ways to install this package.

You could run this ad hoc command:

pip install ago

or specify ago under the setup_requires list within your setuptools-compatible project’s setup.py file.

How to use

The ago module comes with two functions:

1. human

2. delta2dict

You really only need to worry about human.

Here are all the available arguments and defaults:

human(dt, precision=2, past_tense='{} ago', future_tense='in {}', abbreviate=False):

dt

either a datetime or timedelta object to become human readable, required

precision

control how verbose the output should look, optional

past_tense

format string used when dt is a past datetime, optional

future_tense

format string used when dt is a future datetime, optional

abbreviate

boolean to abbreviate the units, defaults to False

Here is an example on how to use human:

from ago import human
from ago import delta2dict

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

# pretend this was stored in database
db_date = datetime(
  year = 2010,
  month=5,
  day=4,
  hour=6,
  minute=54,
  second=33,
  microsecond=4000
 )

# to find out how long ago, use the human function
print 'Created ' + human( db_date )

# optionally pass a precision
print 'Created ' + human( db_date, 3 )
print 'Created ' + human( db_date, 6 )

We also support future dates and times:

PRESENT = datetime.now()
PAST = PRESENT - timedelta( 492, 58711, 45 ) # days, secs, ms
FUTURE = PRESENT + timedelta( 2, 12447, 963 ) # days, secs, ms

print human( FUTURE )

Example past_tense and future_tense keyword arguments:

output1 = human( PAST,
  past_tense = 'titanic sunk {0} ago',
  future_tense = 'titanic will sink in {0} from now'
)

output2 = human( FUTURE,
  past_tense = 'titanic sunk {0} ago',
  future_tense = 'titanic will sink in {0} from now'
)

print output1
# titanic sunk 1 year, 127 days ago
print output2
# titanic will sink in 2 days, 3 hours from now

Now we will document how to use delta2dict:

# subtract two datetime objects for a timedelta object
delta = PRESENT - db_date

# create a dictionary of units out of the timedelta
print delta2dict( delta )

Need more examples?

You should look at test_ago.py

How do I thank you?

You should follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/russellbal

License

Public Domain

Public Revision Control

https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/ago