Fuzzy Date algorithm in Objective-C

Dates are represented in Cocoa using the NSDate class. There is a convenient method implemented in NSDate to obtain the delta in seconds between two date instances, timeIntervalSinceDate:. This is called upon an NSDate instance, taking another NSDate object as an argument. It returns an NSTimeInterval (which is a typedef for a double), which is representative of the number of seconds between the two dates.

Given this, it would be fairly simple to adapt the code you have given above to an Objective-C/Cocoa context. Since the delta calculated by NSDate is given in seconds, given two dates, you could easily adapt the code above:

//Constants
#define SECOND 1
#define MINUTE (60 * SECOND)
#define HOUR (60 * MINUTE)
#define DAY (24 * HOUR)
#define MONTH (30 * DAY)

- (NSString*)timeIntervalWithStartDate:(NSDate*)d1 withEndDate:(NSDate*)d2
{
    //Calculate the delta in seconds between the two dates
    NSTimeInterval delta = [d2 timeIntervalSinceDate:d1];

    if (delta < 1 * MINUTE)
    {
        return delta == 1 ? @"one second ago" : [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d seconds ago", (int)delta];
    }
    if (delta < 2 * MINUTE)
    {
        return @"a minute ago";
    }
    if (delta < 45 * MINUTE)
    {
        int minutes = floor((double)delta/MINUTE);
        return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d minutes ago", minutes];
    }
    if (delta < 90 * MINUTE)
    {
        return @"an hour ago";
    }
    if (delta < 24 * HOUR)
    {
        int hours = floor((double)delta/HOUR);
        return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d hours ago", hours];
    }
    if (delta < 48 * HOUR)
    {
        return @"yesterday";
    }
    if (delta < 30 * DAY)
    {
        int days = floor((double)delta/DAY);
        return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d days ago", days];
    }
    if (delta < 12 * MONTH)
    {
        int months = floor((double)delta/MONTH);
        return months <= 1 ? @"one month ago" : [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d months ago", months];
    }
    else
    {
        int years = floor((double)delta/MONTH/12.0);
        return years <= 1 ? @"one year ago" : [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d years ago", years];
    }
}

This would then be called, passing the start and end NSDate objects as arguments, and would return an NSString with the time interval.