Format date and time in java with prettytime

Prettytime is a nice java library to format a java Date()s in a nice humanized ago format, like:

• moments ago
• 2 minutes ago
• 13 hours ago
• 7 months ago
• 2 years ago

Prettytime is localized in over 30 languages.

It’s super simple to use

Add the dependency to your maven pom:

   org.ocpsoft.prettytime
   prettytime
   3.2.7.Final

or an sbt dependency if you use an activator project like play framework.

libraryDependencies += "org.ocpsoft.prettytime" % "prettytime" % "3.2.7.Final"

Then add the following static method to a helper class and call it from your json processor or your template engine.

public static String agoHumanized(final Date date, Locale locale){
   PrettyTime p = new PrettyTime(locale);
   return p.format(date);
}

Thats it!

You can find the code on github and the documentation on the ocpsoft page. Happy coding.