Angular TimePast Pipe NgTimePastPipe

An easy-to-use and lightweight Angular Pipe, that transform any DateLike Input to a human-readable string that represents the time between now, and the given date!

Overview

• Display both, past and future events well readable
• Support for all common type of input values that represent some sort of DateTime including:
  • Basically everything that can be parsed by JavaScripts Date Constructor
  • Numeric Epoch time values like (Unix Timestamp or JavaScripts Date.now())
  • ISO (8601) Strings (Example 2021-01-31T03:58:23.658Z)
• Light-weight, performance optimized and easy to use
• Customizable and Translatable
• No stale timestamp...

Demo

See it in Action and try it by yourself on the Demo Playground

Outputs

From top to bottom (First Fit)

Times in the past

Time Input	Output	Extra
Below 5 seconds	a few seconds ago	Updates every second
Below 59 seconds	X seconds ago	-
Below 90 seconds	about a minute ago	-
Below 45 Minutes	X minutes ago	Updates every minute
Below 90 Minutes	one hour ago	-
Below 22 Hours	X hours ago	Updates every hour
Below 36 Hours	a day ago	-
Below 25 Days	X days ago	-
Below 45 Days	a month ago	-
Below 356 Days	X months ago	-
Below 545 Days	a year ago	-
More than 546 Days	X years ago	-

Times in the future

Time Input	Output	Extra
Below 59 Seconds	in X seconds	Updates every second
Below 90 Seconds	in one minute	-
Below 59 Minutes	in X minutes	Updates every minute
Below 90 Minutes	in one hour	-
Below 22 Hours	in X hours	Updates every hour
Below 36 Hours	in one day	-
Below 25 Days	in X days	-
Below 45 Days	in one month	-
Below 356 Days	in X months	-
Below 545 Days	in one year	-
More than 546 Days	in X years	-

Installation

npm i ng-time-past-pipe

Usage

import { TimePastPipe } from 'ng-time-past-pipe';

@NgModule({
  imports: [TimePastPipe]
})
export class FeatureModule {}

Angular 13 and below

import { NgTimePastPipeModule } from 'ng-time-past-pipe';

@NgModule({
imports: [NgTimePastPipeModule]
})
export class FeatureModule {}

Using the Pipe

<h2>This Page was rendered: {{ date1 | timePast }}</h2>

Prevent overflow from countdown to a time in the past

<h2>This Page was rendered: {{ date1 | timePast: false }}</h2>

Using the Service

import { TimePastService } from 'ng-time-past-pipe';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-test'
})
export class TestComponent {
  someTimePast: string;

  constructor(private timePastService: TimePastService) {
    this.someTimePast = this.timePastService.timePast('2021-01-31T16:12:00.000Z');
  }
}

Customization

Overwrite the Result Output

Sometimes it is inevitable to adjust the output. Common use cases are, for example:

• Language Localization (l10n) / Internationalization (i18n),
• Adjusting the time intervals (output conditions) to your own needs. Check the default time intervals
• Or even more specific customizations

Responsible in the last instance is the TimeDiffGenerator. You can override the default one by providing your own custom generator using the CUSTOM_TIME_DIFF_GENERATOR InjectionToken:

import {
  CUSTOM_TIME_DIFF_GENERATOR,
  defaultTimeDiffGenerator,
  TimePastPipe,
  TimeDiffGenerator
} from 'ng-time-past-pipe';

export const timeDiffGenerator: TimeDiffGenerator = (diff): string => {
  if (diff.seconds <= 5) {
    return diff.isFuture ? 'In a few moments' : 'A few moments ago';
  } else {
    return defaultTimeDiffGenerator(diff);
  }
}


@NgModule({
  declarations: [TestComponent],
  providers: [
    { provide: CUSTOM_TIME_DIFF_GENERATOR, useValue: timeDiffGenerator },
  ],
  imports: [CommonModule, TimePastPipe],
  exports: [TestComponent]
})
export class TestModule {}

Distinguish between future and past events by diff.isFuture. You can always fall back to the defaultTimeDiffGenerator your custom one, as shown in the example above.

Adjust the Update Interval

When you make changes to the "Result Output", you should keep in mind that the default update cycle, while being kept quite general, it's also somewhat adjusted with the default generator.

Default Update Interval:

Time Difference	Update Interval
less than 1 min	every second
less than an hour	every 30 seconds
less then a day	every 5 minutes
greater than a day	every hour

If the Change-Detector cycles are no longer sufficient, then you should adapt the UpdateIntervallGenerator to the new circumstances. Just as with TimeDiffGenerator, you can provide the CUSTOM_UPDATE_INTERVAL_GENERATOR injection token with an alternative Generator to accomplish this:

import { CUSTOM_UPDATE_INTERVAL_GENERATOR, TimePastPipe } from 'ng-time-past-pipe';

@NgModule({
  providers: [{ provide: CUSTOM_UPDATE_INTERVAL_GENERATOR, useValue: updateIntervalGenerator }],
  imports: [TimePastPipe],
})
export class TestModule {}

import { UpdateIntervalGenerator } from 'ng-time-past-pipe';

const updateIntervalGenerator: UpdateIntervalGenerator = (diff): number => {
  if (diff.seconds < 60) {
    return 5;
  }
  return 20;
}

Keep in mind that the return value should be the interval in seconds.

Notes

This is a rewrite of the orphaned project AndrewPoyntz Time-ago-pipe. It's a hard fork and should provide a better performance and compatibility as well as additional features.

Feel free to open an issue when you are missing any feature or experience any problems. Any contributions are welcome :)