skipping over potential nulls c#

Question

I have this block of code that eventually get serialized to JSON, for use in the Jquery FullCalender plugin. The ToUnixTimeSpan method taskes in a DateTime object and returns the number of seconds since 1970.

DateEnd could be null. In this block of code how do i test for the null and skip the end = ToUnixTimespan(e.DateEnd), if DateEnd is null? is there a C# equivalent to the groovy safe operator?

var listEvents = from e in eventRepository.GetAllEvents()

                         select new
                         {
                             id = e.EventID,
                             title = e.EventTitle,
                             start = ToUnixTimespan(e.DateStart),

                             end = ToUnixTimespan(e.DateEnd),
                             url = "/Events/Details/" + e.EventID
                         };

Further info about the ToUnixTimespanMethod:

private long ToUnixTimespan(DateTime date)
    {
        TimeSpan tspan = date.ToUniversalTime().Subtract(new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0));
        return (long)Math.Truncate(tspan.TotalSeconds);
    }

Answer 1

Well, how about:

end = e.DateEnd == null ? (long?) null : ToUnixTimespan(e.DateEnd)

It's hard to say for sure as we don't know the type returned by ToUnixTimespan.

Answer 2

Wait-a-minute... Why am I wasting this on a comment, when I could be leveraging Jon's work for some rep.. ;-)

end = e.DateEnd == null ? (long?) null : ToUnixTimespan(e.DateEnd.Value) 

That should solve the "cannot convert from 'System.DateTime?' to 'System.DateTime'." error.