This is a subclass of android.widget.TextView that exposes a method setDate() which accepts a long Unix timestamp or java.util.Date. The view converts the date into a String which describes the date in terms of time since that timestamp. For example, if the current timestamp is Unix 1453503166 and we call timeSinceTextView.setDate(1453503116), "50 seconds ago" is displayed.

Changelog

Javadoc

I actually wrote this library before I knew about DateUtils.getRelativeTimeSpanString, but the output is actually quite a bit different. The DateUtils implementation should return localized text and allows for customizable flags. See here for a comparison of the output of different time stamps.

Simply declare a TimeSinceTextView in XML or create one in code.

<com.ddiehl.timesincetextview.TimeSinceTextView
  android:id="@+id/timestamp"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

Then call setDate(Date) or setDate(long) with a Unix timestamp, and the text will be automatically generated and set to the view.

((TimeSinceTextView) findViewById(R.id.timestamp)).setDate(1452827942);

To get an abbreviated form of the converted text, add app:abbreviated="true" to your XML layout.

<com.ddiehl.timesincetextview.TimeSinceTextView
  xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  app:tstv_abbreviated="true" />

The class TimeSince also contains static methods which can be used to retrieve a relative timestamp string without an instance of TimeSinceTextView.

repositories {
    maven { url "https://jitpack.io" }
}
dependencies {
  compile 'com.github.damien5314:TimeSinceTextView:1.+'
}

Pull requests are welcome, in particular in would be nice to have strings.xml translated into as many languages as possible.