DateTime casting/magic

Question

Is there a nice concise way to write this logic in C#?

if ((DateTime.Now >= "8:00 AM") && (DateTime.Now < 5:00 PM))
{// do something}

I am making a demo app where I want to make something happen in the work day, but I don't want this code to stand out much (a lot of casting = bad). (Because I want my demo stuff to be easier to see.

Answer 1

Well, you could do:

DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
if (now.Hour < 8 || now.Hour >= 17)

Note that I generally prefer to only use the DateTime.Now property once, copying the result into the local variable as above - that way you don't get odd possibilities due to the time changing between calls. Not a problem here, but it could be in other cases.

Another possibility is to use DateTime.TimeOfDay if you want to handle things that way. I think the above is about as simple as it gets though.

EDIT: Steven pointed out that I changed the && in your original logic to || - your original logic can never work, as it can never be before 8am and after 5pm. The above works for "if it's not in the working day" - if you want "if it is in the working day" you just need:

DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
if (now.Hour >= 8 && now.Hour < 17)

Answer 2

I think what you want to do here is something like this:

var now = DateTime.Now;
if (now.Hour >= 8 && now.Hour < 17)

Answer 3

If you can format a string in the right format for the current date and start / end times you can use something like this.

DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
DateTime start = Convert.ToDateTime(now.Date.ToShortDateString() + " 8:00:00 AM");
DateTime end = Convert.ToDateTime(now.Date.ToShortDateString() + " 5:00:00 PM");
if (now >= start && now < end)
{

}

I still think it's cleaner to use the hour method posted by others, but this is a method that provides an answer similar to how you asked your question.

Answer 4

If you wanted to make it "pretty" you could also use an extension method:

public static class DateTimeHelper
{
    public static DateTime Time(this string time)
    {
        DateTime theTime = DateTime.Parse(time);
        return theTime;
    }
}

...

   if (DateTime.Now < "8:00 AM".Time() && DateTime.Now > "5:00 PM".Time())
   {
        // do something
   }