What is the best way to convert this string to minutes?

Question

I have combobox in winforms that has the following elements:

15 min 30 min 1 hr 1 hr 30 min 2 hr 2 hr 30 min etc . . 

Here is a screenshot of the combobox winforms collection item editor

and I need to parse this line and return an integer that represents the number of minutes. I wanted to see the most elegant way to do this (right now I am dividing the space and then counting the length of the array, and this is a bit wrong.

So, parsing

 2h 30 mins 

will return 150

Answer 1

Since you said it was a combo box, you have to analyze the value. The user can also enter his own value.

 var formats = new[] {"h' hr'", "m' min'", "h' hr 'm' min'"}; TimeSpan ts; if (!TimeSpan.TryParseExact(value, formats, null, out ts)) { // raise a validation message to your user. } // you said you wanted an integer number of minutes. var minutes = (int) ts.TotalMinutes; 

You can pass any string specified in your example as value .

However , remember that due to the way TimeSpan works, you cannot analyze more than 23 hours or more than 59 minutes with this approach. The program “24 hours” or “60 minutes” or any combination of these will not be performed.

Answer 2

I would use Dictionary for this, so there was no parsing. (It works well when there is a fixed choice.) I am more familiar with Delphi UI controls than .NET, so there may be a better way to populate a ComboBox than what I'm doing here, but I'm sure someone will tell me if is, and I can fix it.

(The code is Oxygene, but it should be easily translatable in C # or VB.Net.)

 method MainForm.MainForm_Load(sender: System.Object; e: System.EventArgs); var KC: Dictionary<String, Int32>.KeyCollection; begin aItems := new Dictionary<String, Int32>; aItems.Add('15 min', 15); aItems.Add('30 min', 30); aItems.Add('1 hr', 60); aItems.Add('1 hr 30 min', 90); aItems.Add('2 hr', 120); aItems.Add('2 hr 30 min', 150); KC := aItems.Keys; for s in KC do comboBox2.Items.Add(s); comboBox2.DropDownStyle := ComboBoxStyle.DropDownList; end; method MainForm.comboBox2_SelectedIndexChanged(sender: System.Object; e: System.EventArgs); begin // Safe since style is DropDownList. label1.Text := aItems[comboBox2.SelectedItem.ToString].ToString(); end; 

Answer 3

This should work:

  static int GetAllNumbersFromString(string timeString) { int min = 0; MatchCollection mc=Regex.Matches(timeString, @"\d+"); if(timeString.Contains("hr") && mc.Count = 1) { min = mc[0] * 60; } else { if(mc.Count > 1) { min = mc[0] * 60 + mc[1]; } else { min = mc[0]; } } return min; }