Find if current time falls in a time range

Question

Using .NET 3.5

I want to determine if the current time falls in a time range.

So far I have the currentime:

DateTime currentTime = new DateTime();
currentTime.TimeOfDay;

I'm blanking out on how to get the time range converted and compared. Would this work?

if (Convert.ToDateTime("11:59") <= currentTime.TimeOfDay 
    && Convert.ToDateTime("13:01") >= currentTime.TimeOfDay)
{
   //match found
}

UPDATE1: Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I wasn't familiar with the TimeSpan function.

Rozanneroze

Duplicate: #1408665 – Dania

Do you need to be concerned with crossing midnight? – Malda

crossing midnight isn't a concern but anything that spans midnight is sure a bane of my programming experience... – Rozanneroze

Answer 1

For checking for a time of day use:

TimeSpan start = new TimeSpan(10, 0, 0); //10 o'clock
TimeSpan end = new TimeSpan(12, 0, 0); //12 o'clock
TimeSpan now = DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay;

if ((now > start) && (now < end))
{
   //match found
}

For absolute times use:

DateTime start = new DateTime(2009, 12, 9, 10, 0, 0)); //10 o'clock
DateTime end = new DateTime(2009, 12, 10, 12, 0, 0)); //12 o'clock
DateTime now = DateTime.Now;

if ((now > start) && (now < end))
{
   //match found
}

Bathroom

How to count the number of matches? For example I want to count how many saturdays and sundays are in the range. – Converted

@pmbiesiada: This is completely out of the scope of the original question (and the answer). You should make this a new question, but do a serach here on SO if something like this has been answered before. Good luck. – Bathroom

What if there are different time for different days? Is there a easy to compare that? #22770057 – Latoyialatreece

@SearchForKnowledge: Compare for what? Please be more specific about what you want to accomplish or give some examples. – Bathroom

I was able to figure it out with some help. Thank you :) I wanted to compare the current time with the operation business hours. – Latoyialatreece

@FrankBollack how to capture the local time while doing this? – Income

What if your times span goes from 11 pm to 1 am? – Worcester

@SamIam: A Timespan is simply a relative amount of time, meaning a number of days, hours or seconds. It does not know about "when". The first example compares the time of day by using the amout of time that has passed since the start of the day: e.g. 10 hours meaning 10 o'clock AM. – Bathroom

@FrankBollack i did not say "Timespan" I said "Time Span" – Worcester

The answer below should be the accepted one... This one doesn't check for TimeSpans over days, e.g. from 22:00:00 to 02:00:00... – Clare

Answer 2

Some good answers here but none cover the case of your start time being in a different day than your end time. If you need to straddle the day boundary, then something like this may help:

TimeSpan start = TimeSpan.Parse("22:00"); // 10 PM
TimeSpan end = TimeSpan.Parse("02:00");   // 2 AM
TimeSpan now = DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay;

if (start <= end)
{
    // start and stop times are in the same day
    if (now >= start && now <= end)
    {
        // current time is between start and stop
    }
}
else
{
    // start and stop times are in different days
    if (now >= start || now <= end)
    {
       // current time is between start and stop
    }
}

Note that in this example the time boundaries are inclusive and that this still assumes less than a 24-hour difference between start and stop.

Sebiferous

What if there are different time for different days? Is there a easy to compare that? #22770057 – Latoyialatreece

Good point, that makes sense. If the measured time passes through midnight then this would be the only answer that would still be correct. – Bacciferous

thank you, after hours i tried for 11:57 pm and this worked: TimeSpan time = new TimeSpan(23, 57, 00); DateTime date_with_time = mydate.Add(time); – Sympathize

Thank you for that. The answer seems simple to come to, but it's kinda awkward to conceptualize. – Worcester

This is a great answer. I'm writing a method to determine whether the time of a given DateTime falls within specified business hours. Business hours could be on the same day, but they could also span two days (e.g., 3pm - 1am operating hours). – Distinctly

This post should be marked as the answer as it has 24h cycle completeness – Dann

Answer 3

A simple little extension function for this:

public static bool IsBetween(this DateTime now, TimeSpan start, TimeSpan end)
{
    var time = now.TimeOfDay;
    // Scenario 1: If the start time and the end time are in the same day.
    if (start <= end)
        return time >= start && time <= end;
    // Scenario 2: The start time and end time is on different days.
    return time >= start || time <= end;
}

Attired

Good addition Andre. Wouldn't have thought to do an OR comparison for the different day case. – Lactalbumin

Great little piece of code but one problem with it. What if you specify the same start and end time. One assumption is that, it may mean it should span over a 24 hour period which means your condition which checks start <= end should be change to start < end and another assumption might be that it is on the same day but if this is the case, it will likely fail if you use Now.TimeOfDay as it includes milliseconds and causes to be out of range. – Lumenhour

@Lumenhour Nice catch :) You are welcome to try and fix it. – Eindhoven

Another variation to consider is changing the two time <= end to time < end. – Jodhpurs

Answer 4

if (new TimeSpan(11,59,0) <= currentTime.TimeOfDay && new TimeSpan(13,01,0) >=  currentTime.TimeOfDay)
{
   //match found
}

if you really want to parse a string into a TimeSpan, then you can use:

    TimeSpan start = TimeSpan.Parse("11:59");
    TimeSpan end = TimeSpan.Parse("13:01");

Pre

thank you, after hours i tried for 11:57 pm and this worked: TimeSpan time = new TimeSpan(23, 57, 00); DateTime date_with_time = mydate.Add(time); – Sympathize

Answer 5

Try using the TimeRange object in C# to complete your goal.

TimeRange timeRange = new TimeRange();
timeRange = TimeRange.Parse("13:00-14:00");

bool IsNowInTheRange = timeRange.IsIn(DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay);
Console.Write(IsNowInTheRange);

Here is where I got that example of using TimeRange

Jailbreak

TimeRange is not a class from any C# library. It is an external class that can be downloaded at the link above. – Glaswegian

Answer 6

The TimeOfDay property returns a TimeSpan value.

Try the following code:

TimeSpan time = DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay;

if (time > new TimeSpan(11, 59, 00)        //Hours, Minutes, Seconds
 && time < new TimeSpan(13, 01, 00)) {
    //match found
}

Also, new DateTime() is the same as DateTime.MinValue and will always be equal to 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM. (Value types cannot have non-empty default values) You want to use DateTime.Now.

Strephon

Answer 7

You're very close, the problem is you're comparing a DateTime to a TimeOfDay. What you need to do is add the .TimeOfDay property to the end of your Convert.ToDateTime() functions.

Abbott

Answer 8

Will this be simpler for handling the day boundary case? :)

TimeSpan start = TimeSpan.Parse("22:00");  // 10 PM
TimeSpan end = TimeSpan.Parse("02:00");    // 2 AM
TimeSpan now = DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay;

bool bMatched = now.TimeOfDay >= start.TimeOfDay &&
                now.TimeOfDay < end.TimeOfDay;
// Handle the boundary case of switching the day across mid-night
if (end < start)
    bMatched = !bMatched;

if(bMatched)
{
    // match found, current time is between start and end
}
else
{
    // otherwise ... 
}

Gass

Answer 9

4 times checking

public static void GetTime()
        {
            var dt =  DateTime.Now;
            int hours = dt.Hour;
            int min = dt.Minute;

            if (hours >= 1 && hours <= 12)
            {
                //Good Morning
            }
            else if (hours >= 12 && hours <= 16)
            {
                //Good Afternoon
            }
            else if (hours >= 16 && hours <= 21)
            {
                //Good Evening
            }
            else if (hours >= 21 && hours <= 24)
            {
                //Good Night
            }
        }

Clyde

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Arbour

Answer 10

We didn't want our service to run during the night. So we created this condition to check that current time in within the time window of 9am (today) and 1am (the next day):

if (DateTime.Now > DateTime.Now.Date && DateTime.Now <= DateTime.Now.Date.AddHours(1.00) || 
DateTime.Now >= DateTime.Now.Date.AddHours(9))
{
 // Current Time is within specified time window.
}

Harriman

Answer 11

Using Linq we can simplify this by this

 Enumerable.Range(0, (int)(to - from).TotalHours + 1)
            .Select(i => from.AddHours(i)).Where(date => date.TimeOfDay >= new TimeSpan(8, 0, 0) && date.TimeOfDay <= new TimeSpan(18, 0, 0))

Carrick

Answer 12

 using System;

 public class Program
 {
    public static void Main()
    {
        TimeSpan t=new TimeSpan(20,00,00);//Time to check

        TimeSpan start = new TimeSpan(20, 0, 0); //8 o'clock evening

        TimeSpan end = new TimeSpan(08, 0, 0); //8 o'clock Morning

        if ((start>=end && (t<end ||t>=start))||(start<end && (t>=start && t<end)))
        {
           Console.WriteLine("Mached");
        }
        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Not Mached");
        }

    }
 }

Rehash