Question

Having derived this logic to bind dropdownlist to set of time intervals, I would like to get this improved in terms

• Use native data types designed to date and time

• Make it configurable

pseudocode

for (var hoursCount = 0; hoursCount <= 12; i++) {
    for (var timeSlots = 0; timeSlots < 2; j++) {
        string hourAndMinute = hoursCount;
        if (timeSlots == 0) {
            hourAndMinute += ":00 AM";
        } else {
            hourAndMinute += ":30 AM";
        }
        if (hourAndMinute != "12:00 AM" || hourAndMinute != "12:30 AM") {
            alert(hourAndMinute);
        }
    }
}

Output

0:00 AM

0:30 AM

.
.
.

12:30 AM

Answer 1

It’s unclear what sort of “configuration” you want here, but as you’re only dealing with a time, I would personally use Noda Time which has the LocalTime struct for handling this sort of thing. (Disclaimer: I’m the main developer on Noda Time, so I’m somewhat biased.) You could just use DateTime, but as you don’t want a date…

It’s not really clear what kind of “configuration” you want, but in Noda Time you could write:

LocalTimePattern pattern = LocalTimePattern.CreateWithInvariantInfo("hh:mm tt");
for (var hour = 0; hour <= 12; hour++) {
    for (var slot = 0; slot < 2; slot++) {
        LocalTime time = new LocalTime(hour, slot * 30, 0);
        Console.WriteLine(pattern.Format(time));            
    }
}

With more details of what you want to do, we can no doubt help more.

EDIT: Okay, it sounds like maybe you want something like:

static void DisplaySlots(string format, Period slotLength, int slots)
{
    // Or change the parameter to be a LocalTimePattern
    LocalTimePattern pattern = LocalTimePattern.CreateWithInvariantInfo(format);
    LocalTime time = LocalTime.Midnight;
    for (int i = 0; i < slots; i++)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(pattern.Format(time));
        time = time + slotLength;
    }
}

Then call it with:

DisplaySlots("HH:mm", Period.FromMinutes(20), 100);

(Or whatever…)

Alternative using DateTime:

static void DisplaySlots(string format, TimeSpan slotLength, int slots)
{
    DateTime time = DateTime.Today;
    for (int i = 0; i < slots; i++)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(time.ToString(format));
        time = time + slotLength;
    }
}