Cutoff setting for leaving older dates alone.

The cutoff setting, if set to something other than 0, ensures that dates
older than this number of milliseconds is not touched by timeago.

jquery.timeago.js

@@ -41,6 +41,7 @@
       refreshMillis: 60000,
       allowFuture: false,
       localeTitle: false,
+      cutoff: 0,
       strings: {
         prefixAgo: null,
         prefixFromNow: null,
@@ -150,8 +151,12 @@
 
   function refresh() {
     var data = prepareData(this);
+    var $s = $t.settings;
+
     if (!isNaN(data.datetime)) {
-      $(this).text(inWords(data.datetime));
+      if ( $s.cutoff == 0 || distance(data.datetime) < $s.cutoff) {
+        $(this).text(inWords(data.datetime));
+      }
     }
     return this;
   }

test/index.html

@@ -63,6 +63,12 @@
     <p><time id="testTimeTitle" class="timeago" datetime="2012-05-07T10:06:02+02:00" title="May 10, 2012 10:06">May 10, 2012</time></p>
     <p><time id="testTimeTitle2" class="timeago" datetime="2012-05-07T10:06:02+02:00">May 10, 2012</time></p>
 
+    <h2>Cutoff</h2>
+
+    <p>Date that is older than cutoff: <abbr class="timeago cutoff doCutoff" title="1978-12-18">(this should be displayed)</abbr></p>
+
+    <p>Date that is newer than cutoff: <abbr class="timeago loaded cutoff dontCutoff">(you shouldn't see this)</abbr></p>
+
     <h2>Errors</h2>
 
     <p>Bad (letters): <abbr class="bad timeago" title="bleh">(this should be displayed)</abbr>.</p>
@@ -212,9 +218,13 @@
 
       prepareDynamicDates();
 
-      $("abbr.timeago").timeago();
+      $("abbr.timeago").not("abbr.cutoff").timeago();
       $("time.timeago").timeago();
 
+      loadCutoffSetting();
+      $("abbr.cutoff").timeago();
+      unloadCutoffSetting();
+
       var tooltip = $("#testTooltip").data("timeago");
 
       $("abbr.todate").each(function () {
@@ -291,6 +301,20 @@
         ok(tooltip.datetime, "datetime set");
       });
 
+      module("Cutoff");
+
+      test("should not change dates older than cutoff setting", function () {
+        ok(testElements("abbr.doCutoff", function (element) {
+          return (element.html() === "(this should be displayed)");
+        }), "Cutoff setting working fine");
+      });
+
+      test("should change dates newer than cutoff setting", function () {
+        ok(testElements("abbr.dontCutoff", function (element) {
+          return (element.html() === "less than a minute ago");
+        }), "Cutoff setting working fine");
+      });
+
       module("Tooltip");
 
       test("should set title to original text contents", function () {

test/test_helpers.js

@@ -22,6 +22,14 @@ function unloadNumbers() {
   jQuery.timeago.settings.strings.numbers = [];
 }
 
+function loadCutoffSetting() {
+	jQuery.timeago.settings.cutoff = 7*24*60*60*1000;
+}
+
+function unloadCutoffSetting() {
+	jQuery.timeago.settings.cutoff = 0;
+}
+
 function loadPigLatin() {
   jQuery.timeago.settings.strings = {
     suffixAgo: "ago-hay",