# ocpsoft/prettytime

Social Style Date and Time Formatting for Java

Repository: https://github.com/ocpsoft/prettytime
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/prettytime
Homepage: http://ocpsoft.org/prettytime/
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-09-29T15:27:00+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 52/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 44, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5742, "days_push": 338, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1324, forks 252 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:22.357714+00:00)

## What it is
PrettyTime is an open-source Java library for formatting dates and times as human-readable, relative timestamps in a social media style (e.g., 'a few minutes ago'). It is fully customizable, supports the JDK 8 DateTime API, and works on Android.

## Use cases
- display '5 minutes ago' style timestamps in a Java app
- format relative dates like Twitter or Facebook in Android
- convert Date objects to human-readable strings
- localize relative time formatting in multiple languages
- show comment or post ages in a web application

## When to choose
- you need social-style relative time formatting in Java or Android
- you want a small, customizable, well-established library with broad language support
- you need JDK 8 java.time API support

## When to avoid
- you need precise, absolute date formatting (use java.time formatters)
- you are not on the JVM platform
- you need to parse natural language dates (see PrettyTime NLP instead)

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: date-time, internationalization
- domain: developer-tools, web-development
- platform: jvm, cross-platform
- tags: relative-time, human-readable-timestamps, social-style-formatting, java-library, localization, android

## Member repositories
- ocpsoft/prettytime (main) score 52

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:22.357714+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:47:01.238989+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/ocpsoft/prettytime (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:22.357714+00:00, sha 873d1cc2685e)
  - homepage: http://ocpsoft.org/prettytime/ (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:57.338572+00:00, sha ddb33e0fa400)
  - site_page: https://www.ocpsoft.org/opensource/creating-a-facebook-app-setup-and-tool-installation (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:57.352285+00:00, sha f2ac239e7200)
  - site_page: https://www.ocpsoft.org/java/getting-started-quickly-with-hibernate-annotations (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:57.355436+00:00, sha 190fdd304659)
  - site_page: http://ocpsoft.org/docs/prettyfaces/3.3.3/en-US/html (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:57.347991+00:00, sha a1234e5d027e)
  - site_page: https://www.ocpsoft.org/topdecked (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:57.349931+00:00, sha b294c1ba9e33)
  - site_page: https://www.ocpsoft.org/releases/prettytime-5-0-0-final-released-new-apis-jdk-8-datetime-support (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:57.357639+00:00, sha ac5b5b831f49)
  - site_page: https://www.ocpsoft.org/releases/rewrite-3-4-0-final-release-announcement (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:57.359492+00:00, sha 325a6ceb4a4c)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.