Getting "time ago" from an Eloquent model

A nice semi-hidden feature of timestamps in Eloquent is that they don't just return strings from the database - they actually return an instance of Carbon, a great extension of PHP's DateTime library. What this means is that a heap of functions (and I mean a heap) are available right on your model's timestamps. It's worth having a read through the GitHub README to see what is available, but one of the coolest methods is diffForHumans(), a handy little function providing the long sought-after "time ago" format we often need.

$user = User::first();
echo $user->created_at->diffForHumans(); // 2 days ago

$user->touch();
echo $user->created_at->diffForHumans(); // a second ago

Too easy! By default, Laravel will return the Carbon object for created_at, updated_at and deleted_at timestamps. However if you'd like it to provide the Carbon object for your own custom timestamps it's also really easy (look up date mutators in the docs).

class User extends Eloquent
{
    public function getDates()
    {
        return array('created_at', 'updated_at', 'deleted_at', 'unsubscribed_at');
    }
}