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:

Prettytime is localized in over 30 languages.

Add the dependency to your maven pom:

<dependency>
   <groupid>org.ocpsoft.prettytime</groupid>
   <artifactid>prettytime</artifactid>
   <version>3.2.7.Final</version>
</dependency>

<groupid>org.ocpsoft.prettytime</groupid>

<artifactid>prettytime</artifactid>

<version>3.2.7.Final</version>

</dependency>

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

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

1	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);
}

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.

jensjaeger.com