What is the best way to declare a time variable in C# in Custom TimePicker

Question

Now I was searching for a free reliable TimePicker control to use in my MVC application until I got fed up with finding one and decided to make my own using by C#..

I did this and it works fine (feel free to copy or re-use..):

public static class OpeningTimesList
{

    /// <summary>
    /// Provides a listItems of opening hours to use in an HTML DropDownListFor helper. 
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="time"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    public static List<SelectListItem> GetOpeningHours(string time)
    {
        var selectOptions = new string[]
        {
            "07:00",
            "07:30",
            "08:00",
            "08:30",
            "09:00",
            "09:30",
            "10:00",
            "10:30",
            "11:00",
            "11:30",
            "12:00",
            "12:30",
            "13:00",
            "13:30",
            "14:00",
            "14:30",
            "15:00",
            "15:30",
            "16:00",
            "16:30",
            "17:00",
            "17:30",
            "18:00",
            "18:30",
            "19:00",
            "19:30",
            "20:00",
            "20:30",
            "21:00",
            "21:30",
            "22:00",
            "22:30"
        };

        return GetDropDownList(selectOptions, time);
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets List Items in Text only, instead of a combination of text and value.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="selectOptions"></param>
    /// <param name="selectedOption"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    private static List<SelectListItem> GetDropDownList(string[] selectOptions, string selectedOption)
    {
        var listItems = new List<SelectListItem>();

        foreach (var option in selectOptions)
        {
            listItems.Add(new SelectListItem
            {
                Text = option,
                Selected = string.Compare(option, selectedOption, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) == 0
            });
        }
        return listItems;
    }
}

Use-age in an MVC razor:

@Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.StartFrom, Website.ViewModels.ViewHelpers.OpeningTimesList.GetOpeningHours(Model.StartFrom.ToString()))

My problem is that my StartFrom property is not string; it is a TimeSpan (or may be it should be a DateTime.. I am ok with converting ToString() or casting in the code behind but Ideally I shouldn't do this. Working with String time items is easy - but what should I use to make this better; do I use DateTime or do I use TimeSpan.

So in one line: what would you use to represent a time value such as - for example: 08:30. Would you use a TimeSpan or DateTime?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

Neither. A DateTime represents a date and time, a TimeSpan a certain length of time. Your variable represent a certain repeating moment in time that can occur on any day.

So while having to compromise anyway, use the one that best fits your use case - or take a look at NodaTime's Period.

Of course it depends on what you want to do with the result. You can just use TimeSpan and add it to a certain DateTime.Date to add the hours and minutes from the TimeSpam to the day of the Date.