Formatting time in go can be quite tricky, luckily there is a handy library called go-humanize that makes formatting time much easier.

Add the library to your project with the command below.

go install github.com/dustin/go-humanize

Use the library by passing a time instace to the humanize.Time function. The output will be a nicely formatted date string in the form of 7 {unit} ago. See the example snippet below to learn about the usage.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"

    "github.com/dustin/go-humanize"
)

func main() {
    t := time.Now()
    fmt.Println(humanize.Time(t))
}

Sources

• go package documentation
• library repository

Written by Mykolas Krupauskas. A passionate software developer from Lithuania, currently situated in the Netherlands. Helping people create value with technology.