How do I represent a time only value in .NET?

Question

Is there is way in which one can represent a time only value in .NET without the date? For example, indicating the opening time of a shop?

TimeSpan indicates a range, whereas I only want to store a time value. Using DateTime to indicate this would result in new DateTime(1,1,1,8,30,0) which is not really desirable.

Answer 1

You can use timespan

TimeSpan timeSpan = new TimeSpan(2, 14, 18);
Console.WriteLine(timeSpan.ToString());     // Displays "02:14:18".

[Edit]
Considering the other answers and the edit to the question, I would still use TimeSpan. No point in creating a new structure where an existing one from the framework suffice.
On these lines you would end up duplicating many native data types.

Answer 2

If that empty Date really bugs you, you can also to create a simpler Time structure:

struct Time
{
    public int Hours   { get; set; }
    public int Minutes { get; set; }
    public int Seconds { get; set; }
    public override string ToString()
    {  
        return String.Format(
            "{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}",
            this.Hours, this.Minutes, this.Seconds);
    }
}

Or, why to bother: if you don't need to do any calculation with that information, just store it as String.

Answer 3

As others have said, you can use a DateTime and ignore the date, or use a TimeSpan. Personally I'm not keen on either of these solutions, as neither type really reflects the concept you're trying to represent - I regard the date/time types in .NET as somewhat on the sparse side which is one of the reasons I started Noda Time. When it's actually finished, you'll be able to use the LocalTime type to represent a time of day. I'm not expecting it to be production ready for quite a long time, but we're always open to offers of assistance :)

One thing to consider: the time of day is not necessarily the length of time since midnight on the same day...

Answer 4

If you don't want to use a DateTime or TimeSpan, and just want to store the time of day, you could just store the seconds since midnight in an Int32, or (if you don't even want seconds) the minutes since midnight would fit into an Int16. It would be trivial to write the few methods required to access the Hour, Minute and Second from such a value.

The only reason I can think of to avoid DateTime/TimeSpan would be if the size of the structure is critical.

(Of course, if you use a simple scheme like the above wrapped in a class, then it would also be trivial to replace the storage with a TimeSpan in future if you suddenly realise that would give you an advantage)