C#: Best way to achieve a nicely formatted time st

Question

I am writing this question as I am asking for the best way to do this. I have many of these in my program and I want to make a method to convert a Int32 which contains a seconds of a timer into a nicely formatted string.

So for example, if my timer int was at lets say a random number like 16429 it would be:

4 hours, 32 minutes and 9 seconds

If it was 600, it would be:

10 minutes

If it was 60, it would be

1 minute

If it was 172801, it would be

2 days and 1 second

If it was 32, it would be

32 seconds

I want the "s" 's at the end of each word like "minute", "second" and "day" to only put S if it isn't equal to 1, therefor it isn't really needed to be pronounced correctly. I also only want days and hours and other things added if they are needed, so if the timer is below 1 day in seconds, it only shows hours, minutes and seconds, or what is needed.

What is the best way to achieve something like this? I have this function below, but it is very messy and only goes up to minutes and seconds, not hours or days:

public static string GetConvertedTime(int timer)
{
    int Minutes = timer / 60;
    int Seconds = timer - Minutes * 60;

    if (timer < 60)
    {
        string secs = (Seconds != 1) ? "s" : "";
        return "" + timer + " second" + secs;
    }

    else
    {
        if (Seconds < 1)
        {
            string mins = (Minutes != 1) ? "s" : "";
            return "" + Minutes + " minute" + mins;
        }
        else
        {
            string mins = (Minutes != 1) ? "s" : "";
            string secs = (Seconds != 1) ? "s" : "";
            return "" + Minutes + " minute" + mins + " and " + Seconds + " second" + secs;
        }
    }
}

What exactly is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

You can try this library named Humanizer

Answer 2

Probably the best way I can think of is to use a TimeSpan like so:

var time = new TimeSpan(0, 0, timer);
var s = "s";
return $"{time.Days} day{(time.Days != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}, {time.Hours} hour{(time.Hours != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}, {time.Minutes} minute{(time.Minutes != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}, and {time.Seconds} second{(time.Seconds != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}";

if you need to hide the empty leading values:

var sb = new StringBuilder();
var s = "s";
var time = new TimeSpan(0, 0, timer);
var continuation = false;
if (time.Days > 0)
{
    sb.Append($"{time.Days} day{(time.Days != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}, ");
    continuation = true;
}
if (time.Hours > 0 || continuation)
{
    sb.Append($"{time.Hours} hour{(time.Hours != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}, ");
    continuation = true;
}
if (time.Minutes > 0 || continuation)
{
    sb.Append($"{time.Minutes} minute{(time.Minutes != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}{(continuation ? "," : String.Empty)} ");
    continuation = true;
}
if (continuation) sb.Append("and ");

sb.Append($"{time.Seconds} second{(time.Seconds != 1 ? s : String.Empty)}");
return sb.ToString();

Answer 3

"Best way" is awfully subjective. DRY is usually best, considering localization and non-regular pluralization forms is usually best, keeping it short and snappy is usually best:

public static string FriendlyDuration(int seconds) {
    int[] divisors = { 60 * 60 * 24, 60 * 60, 60 , 1};
    string[] language = { ", ", " and ", "days", "day", "hours", "hour", "minutes", "minute", "seconds", "second"};
    var parts = new List<string>();
    for (int part = 0; part < divisors.Length; ++part) {
        int count = seconds / divisors[part];
        if (count == 0) continue;
        string unit = language[part*2 + (count == 1 ? 3 : 2)];
        parts.Add(string.Format("{0} {1}", count, unit));
        seconds -= count * divisors[part];
    }
    var result = string.Join(language[0], parts.ToArray());
    if (parts.Count > 1) {
        var ix = result.LastIndexOf(language[0]);
        result = result.Substring(0, ix) + language[1] + result.Substring(ix + language[0].Length);
    }
    return result;
}