Imagine if your favorite YouTube video displayed a publication date like . Dates in this format require mental effort to understand. Have you ever misunderstood reading such dates by misjudging the year or month, or being off 2 hours due to the 24-hour format? This article will show you how to shorten standard date/time formats to or . It would be hard to argue that this method isn't superior. 2017-10-07-14:55:09 5 years ago Just now ChatGPT Assistance I wrote this Python 3 script as a learning exercise. I employed ChatGPT to help with not only the programming but also the crafting of this article. I was surprised at how useful it was. (ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology). ChatGPT seemed happy to write the introduction and the conclusion for this article. When I asked ChatGPT to write the entire article it replied:
" "
Oddly, it didn't complain when I requested additional paragraphs - which made me laugh. It turned out I had to write a lot of the article from scratch. I'm sorry that goes beyond my current capabilities. The Solution Python will format the date to more readable formats like - a whopping 25 characters long. That helps a little bit with readability.  This article will show you how to print dates as: or . If less than a minute ago then will be printed. This is the same format that YouTube uses for time-stamping content. January 30, 2022 14:55:09 1 year ago 1 month ago Just now Function Breakdown The Python script consists of three main functions: takes a date string as input and returns the difference between that date and the current time as a object. calculate_time_difference(date_input) datetime.timedelta converts the object into a human-readable string showing how much time has passed since the input date. This function work by looping through the using loop, starting with the largest (year) and checking with the , if it's greater than or equal to this unit it returns the string with the number of and , and then break out of the loop. The function also includes a check for returning if the time difference is less than a minute. convert_time_difference_to_string(time_difference) timedelta time_units for time_unit current time_difference unit time_units Just now combines the first two functions and handles any errors that might occur, such as invalid date formats or dates in the future. get_how_long_ago(date_input) You can change the date format of to suit your needs. %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S The last part of the script prints out examples of dates processed by . I've used to generate some of the examples. Cases for invalid dates are also provided. get_how_long_ago now() Full Script https://gist.github.com/Rob-McCormack/9fe570122fb6fadb5de0406a7bc9844d You can customize this script to your own needs. For mobile devices,  YouTube will often abbreviate to . If you prefer that, simply change the to and comment out the test for pluralization as shown: 1 year ago 1y ago year y if num_units > 1:
    time_string += 's' Going Further Dates in Tables It may be useful when presenting dates in a table to use the formatting. For example, compare the presentation of sample data sorted by field: how long ago Last_Visit -------------------------------------
   ID   Dog Name         Last Visit
    1   Bella-boy       2023-01-08        
    3   Charlie         2022-07-01       
    2   Greta           2018-10-10 Could be presented like this: -------------------------------------
   ID   Dog Name         Last Visit
    1   Bella-boy       3 days ago       
    3   Charlie         6 months ago       
    2   Greta           4 years ago Provide Both Types of Formats YouTube will first present you with but if you click or hover over that text, the exact date will be displayed, . The function could return a containing both formats. This may be a nice feature to consider in your programs that involve dates. 5 years ago Oct 6, 2017 tuple Conclusion While this script provides a straightforward and effective solution for converting date strings into a more human-readable format. You may want to consider using the Python package for even more advanced formatting options. Docs can be found . humanize here I hope you enjoy playing around with this technique in your projects.

The code in this story is for educational purposes. The readers are solely responsible for whatever they build with it.

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