what is the most elegant way of showing first week in a month

Question

In C#, i want to show the first week in a calendar (in a html table) and i am trying to figure out the most elegant algorithm to generate the right days.

If the first day of the week is not Sunday, i want to show the days of preceding month (like you would see on a regular calendar). So, as an input you have a current month. In this case May. I want to generate this:

Month: May

 <table>
 <tr>
   <th>S</th>
   <th>M</th>
   <th>T</th>
   <th>W</th>
   <th>TH</th>
   <th>F</th>
   <th>Sa</th>
 </tr>
 <tr>
   <td>25</td>
   <td>26</td>
   <td>27</td>
   <td>28</td>
   <td>29</td>
   <td>30</td>
   <td>1</td>
 </tr></table>

so it should display something like this (ignore the alignment)

S | M | T | W | Th | F | Sa |
25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 1

given that each month would have the start of day be a different day of the week, i am trying to figure out an elegant way to get the values of this data using the DateTime object. I see it has a dayofweek property on a date.

i am generating this table in C# on my server to pass down to a html page.

Answer 1

Here's one simple way to do this.

    //Code not tested thoroughly.
    private DateTime[] GetWeek(int month)
    {
        DateTime firstDayofMonth = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.Year, month, 1);
        if (firstDayofMonth.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Sunday)
            return GetWeek(firstDayofMonth);
        else
        {
            DateTime sundayOfPreviousMonth = firstDayofMonth;
            do
            {
                sundayOfPreviousMonth = sundayOfPreviousMonth.AddDays(-1);
            } while (sundayOfPreviousMonth.DayOfWeek != DayOfWeek.Sunday);
            return GetWeek(sundayOfPreviousMonth);
        }
    }

    private DateTime[] GetWeek(DateTime date)
    {
        if (date.DayOfWeek != DayOfWeek.Sunday)
            throw new ArgumentException("Invalid weekday.");
        DateTime[] week = new DateTime[7];
        for (int i = 0; i < week.Length; i++)
        {
            week[i] = date.AddDays(i);
        }
        return week;
    }

Answer 2

You can use the following code to get the first week:

public static IEnumerable<DateTime> GetFirstWeek(int year, int month) {
    DateTime firstDay = new DateTime(year, month, 1);
    firstDay = firstDay.AddDays(-(int) firstDay.DayOfWeek);
    for (int i = 0; i < 7; ++i)
        yield return firstDay.AddDays(i);
}

Answer 3

public static IEnumerable<DateTime> GetFirstWeek(int month, int year)
    {
        var firstDay = new DateTime(year, month, 1);
        var dayOfWeek = firstDay.DayOfWeek;
        var firstWeekDay = firstDay.AddDays(-(int)dayOfWeek);

        for (int i = 0; i < 7; i++)
        {
            yield return firstWeekDay.AddDays(i);
        }
    }

Answer 4

Check this code:

var days = new[]
{
    "S", "M", "T", "W", "TH", "F", "Sa"
};
var date = DateTime.Parse( "01.05.2010" );
var dayOfWeek = (int)date.DayOfWeek;

for( var i = 0; i < 7; i++ )
{
    Console.WriteLine( days[i] + ": " + date.AddDays( i - dayOfWeek ) );
}

This is just code to give you an idea - for instance should you use a CultureInfo to parse your date. I use any date as an input right now, but you can cut it down to the first day of each month, too.

Answer 5

This should work:

DateTime date = new DateTime(year, month, 1);
DayOfWeek firstDay = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek;
int daysBack = (7 + date.DayOfWeek - firstDay) % 7;

Enumerable.Range(-daysBack, 7)
    .Select(x => date.AddDays(x))
    .ToList()
    .ForEach(d => 
    {
        // a place for html generation
    });