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How to represent a .NET DateTime 24-hour format in 01-24 instead of 00-23?

Answer 1

+3 A:

Extend .NET by creating your own format provider: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0asazeez(VS.71).aspx

Pierre 303 2010-09-02 20:30:01

I don't think this is a particularly good idea. The responsibility of IFormatProvider is to format based on a culture, not business rules. While it would work, it is warping the responsibility of that interface and the corresponding overload. Since this is a business concern, the logic should go in the model.

codekaizen 2010-09-02 20:35:23

@code - I disagree. He basically is creating a custom culture, not defining business logic (he's using standard `DateTime` behavior, just displaying the value differently to the user). This is exactly what `IFormatProvider` is for.

Jon B 2010-09-02 20:39:27

@Jon B - How is custom business logic a culture? He specifically states that this is a business requirement.

codekaizen 2010-09-02 20:40:18

@code business logic != business requirement. The business require is that dates be displayed in a specific culture. It could just as easily be EN-US. It happens to be a non-standard "culture" where times run from 1-24.

Jon B 2010-09-02 20:48:18

Having a format provider will also help a lot in conversions. For example converting from a string "24:03:00".

Pierre 303 2010-09-02 21:08:22

Thanks for the suggestions. I may look into creating a custom format provider in the future if this option becomes more widely used in my application.

randbrown 2010-09-09 13:46:04

Answer 2

+2 A:

This sounds like a good candidate for a wrapper class which is used to format the DateTime according to business rules:

public class BusinessDateTimeFormatter
{
    public BusinessDateTimeFormatter(DateTime dateTime)
    {
        _dateTime = dateTime;
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return String.Format("{0} {1}:{2}", _dateTime.Date, _dateTime.Hour + 1, _dateTime.Minute);
    }
}

Alternatively, and perhaps even more correctly, you can create a type which represents the business's idea of a DateTime. In object-oriented design, this replacement of primitive types with custom types happens frequently, since the domain to be modeled has special restrictions just like this one that you describe.

codekaizen 2010-09-02 20:30:34

A customer formatter for a date sounds like the way to go for me. You are encapsulating it and from the name its clear why its been done

JonWillis 2010-09-02 20:40:31

I ended up doing something along the lines of this suggestion - a simple business class to handle the formatting. I chose this approach because it's currently only required in one area of my application so it was this simplest solution for now. If it becomes required in other feature areas of the app, I may consider implementing a more robust custom formatter or something like that.

randbrown 2010-09-09 13:44:13

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How to represent a .NET DateTime 24-hour format in 01-24 instead of 00-23?

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