This ColdFusion function accepts a string or a date and tell you how long ago the date is from now. It comes in handy when needing to display the a message to the user.
You can call the fucntion like this:

1. <cfset mydate = "2009/12/03">
2. <cfinvoke component="MyComponent" method="howLongAgo" returnvariable="returnString"
3.          inputdate="#mydate#" />

Here is the function that can be called from a cfc:

1. <cffunction name="howLongAgo" access="public" output="false" returntype="String">
2.         <cfargument name="inputDate" required="true" type="Date" />
3.         <cfset var datePartList = "yyyy,m,d,h,n,s" />
4.         <cfset var datePartNameList = "year,month,day,hour,minute,second" />
5.         <cfset var returnString = "" />
6.         <cfset var diff = "" />
7.  
8.         <cfloop from="1" to="#listlen(datePartList)#" index="thisPart">
9.                 <cfset diff = datediff(listgetat(datePartList,thisPart),arguments.inputDate,now()) />
10.                 <cfif diff GTE 1>
11.                         <cfset returnString = diff & " " & listgetat(datePartNameList,thisPart) />
12.                         <cfif diff GT 1>
13.                                 <cfset returnString = returnString & "s" />
14.                         </cfif>
15.                         <cfset returnString = returnString & " ago" />
16.                         <cfreturn returnString />
17.                 </cfif>
18.         </cfloop>
19.  
20.         <cfreturn "0 seconds ago" />
21. </cffunction>

Finally, display the output:

<cfoutput>#returnString#</cfoutput>