Format .Net datetime in descriptive text format like "Last Month"?

Question

Is there any functionality in .Net or any Nuget package to put time in a descriptive format of how far in the past it was.

E.g. Given a date say how it was in the past.

• Yesterday
• 5 days ago
• Last Week
• Last Month
• 4 Months ago
• Last Year

I've seen similar stuff in Perl and I don't want to reinvent the wheel

Answer 1

You can install this NuGet Package and you'll have a DateTime.ToNaturalRelativeTime Extension Method that seems to do what you wish.

Answer 2

There's no built-in way to do that on .NET, but it's simple to make an extension method (idea from this question, by Vincent Robert and Jeff Atwood):

public static string AsRelative(this DateTime dt) {
    var ts = new TimeSpan(DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks - dt.Ticks);
    double delta = Math.Abs(ts.TotalSeconds);
    const int SECOND = 1;
    const int MINUTE = 60 * SECOND;
    const int HOUR = 60 * MINUTE;
    const int DAY = 24 * HOUR;
    const int MONTH = 30 * DAY;

    if (delta < 0)
    {
      return "not yet";
    }
    if (delta < 1 * MINUTE)
    {
      return ts.Seconds == 1 ? "one second ago" : ts.Seconds + " seconds ago";
    }
    if (delta < 2 * MINUTE)
    {
      return "a minute ago";
    }
    if (delta < 45 * MINUTE)
    {
      return ts.Minutes + " minutes ago";
    }
    if (delta < 90 * MINUTE)
    {
      return "an hour ago";
    }
    if (delta < 24 * HOUR)
    {
      return ts.Hours + " hours ago";
    }
    if (delta < 48 * HOUR)
    {
      return "yesterday";
    }
    if (delta < 30 * DAY)
    {
      return ts.Days + " days ago";
    }
    if (delta < 12 * MONTH)
    {
      int months = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor((double)ts.Days / 30));
      return months <= 1 ? "one month ago" : months + " months ago";
    }
    else
    {
      int years = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor((double)ts.Days / 365));
      return years <= 1 ? "one year ago" : years + " years ago";
    }
}