MinutesPerDay - Does .NET have anything for it?

Question

Looking at a code review at work for a Win32 C# code I am seeing some lines like this:

int MinutesPerDay = 1440;
int MinutesPerWeek = 10080;
int MinutesPerMonth = 43200;

and so on ...

I am not sure what is wrong with it but still I feel this is not a good code and design? What do you guys think? Could he do it in a better way?

Answer 1

There is a class called "TimeSpan", you can use that

TimeSpan interval = TimeSpan.FromDays(1);
double seconds = interval.TotalSeconds;

I don't consider that better from a coding stand point. You should probably look at your code and figure out why you are storing those values, and find a better way.

Answer 2

Since these are constants, I would declare them as such. Also, making the calculation explicit would be more informative.

private const int MinutesPerDay = 24 * 60;
private const int MinutesPerWeek = 7 * MinutesPerDay;
private const int MinutesPerMonth = 30 * MinutesPerDay;

Answer 3

The closest thing .NET has is TimeSpan.TicksPerDay

Honestly, using ticks for your time constants is generally a good way to go, because ticks are the root value of DateTime and TimeSpan, and it makes it a little more efficient to compare Time values without having to create new instances of anything by simply comparing the Ticks of either your DateTime or TimeSpan to whatever Ticks constant you need to (be it .NET's or yours).

Answer 4

I have ran into this just last week. I wish TimeSpan had a few more From methods for bigger time periods like weeks months and years, but I made due with these:

    /// <summary>
    /// Number of minutes in an hour.
    /// </summary>
    private static readonly double minutesInHour = TimeSpan.FromHours(1).TotalMinutes;

    /// <summary>
    /// Number of hours in a day.
    /// </summary>
    private static readonly double hoursInDay = TimeSpan.FromDays(1).TotalHours;

    /// <summary>
    /// Number of hours in a week (7 days).
    /// </summary>
    private static readonly double hoursInWeek = 7.0D * hoursInDay;

    /// <summary>
    /// Number of hours in a month (30 days).
    /// </summary>
    private static readonly double hoursInMonth = 30.0D * hoursInDay;

The reason they're doubles are to do multiplication and division calculations later on with user input that could be in a different "base" unit.