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c#windowstimertextboxdispatcher
Sneakybastardd
Sneakybastardd

Reputation: 288

Let user specify timer time?

I want the DispatcherTimer to read time values from the textbox : objTextBox. I tried this code however it seems that TimeSpan is not compatible with strings or did I do anything wrong?

Error: Argument 1: cannot convert from 'string' to 'long'

Also; Does the Time have to look like this in textbox: 0, 0, 1 or 00:00:01?

Code here:

    private void testing()
    {
        string theText = objTextBox.Text;
        DispatcherTimer dispatcherTimer = new DispatcherTimer();
        dispatcherTimer.Tick += new EventHandler(listjob3_Tick);
        dispatcherTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(theText);
        dispatcherTimer.Start();
    }

Upvotes: 1

Views: 151

Answers (4)

tnw
tnw

Reputation: 13887

I'm guessing your exception is here:

dispatcherTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(theText);

Use this instead:

dispatcherTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(Convert.ToInt64(theText));

Upvotes: 1

Mike Perrenoud
Mike Perrenoud

Reputation: 67948

To convert to a TimeSpan from a string you could leverage TimeSpan.Parse, but you'd have to conform to this format [ws][-]{ d | [d.]hh:mm[:ss[.ff]] }[ws] where:

ws    is Optional white space.
-     is An optional minus sign, which indicates a negative TimeSpan. 
d     is Days, ranging from 0 to 10675199.
.     is A culture-sensitive symbol that separates days from hours. The invariant format uses a period (".") character.
hh    is Hours, ranging from 0 to 23. 
:     is The culture-sensitive time separator symbol. The invariant format uses a colon (":") character.
mm    is Minutes, ranging from 0 to 59. 
ss    is Optional seconds, ranging from 0 to 59. 
.     is A culture-sensitive symbol that separates seconds from fractions of a second. The invariant format uses a period (".") character.
ff    is Optional fractional seconds, consisting of one to seven decimal digits.

so just converting days you could in fact use TimeSpan.Parse and just pass in the string - but if you wanted to convert minutes it would take some massaging of the input like this:

var input = string.Format("00:{0}", objTextBox.Text.PadLeft(2, '0'));

and so then you could issue var timeSpan = TimeSpan.Parse(input); because you've formatted it properly and the Parse will succeed. Another option is to turn minutes into days I guess, but that would require some floating point work and is really, IMO, not as good of an option.

Upvotes: 1

Nicholas Carey
Nicholas Carey

Reputation: 74385

@Sneakybastardd: have you read the TimeSpan documentation regarding constructor overloads? You'll note that none of them take string arguments: integer types are required.

After reading the documentation, you might find these TimeSpan methods useful:

  • Parse()
  • ParseExact()
  • TryParse()

With respect to format, See "Standard TimeSpan Format Strings" and "Custom TimeSpan Format Strings". Also do a little research on the various default TimeSpan formats for different cultures if that comes into play at all.

Upvotes: 0

alex
alex

Reputation: 12654

To convert string to TimeSpan, use TimeSpan.Parse(str)

Upvotes: 1

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