Question

I have written a small function in C# which isn’t my main launguage so is coming across a little foreign to me.

public bool CheckForKey(string key)
{
    string strKeyTime = Decode(key);
    //valid key will be current time +- 5 minutes
    string strTheTime = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss tt");

    if (strKeyTime == strTheTime)
    {
        return true;
    }
    else
    {
        return false;
    }
}

I need to alter this to allow for 5 minutes, so
if (strKeyTime == strTheTime)
needs to be
if (strKeyTime == strTheTime + or – 5 minutes)

my problem is matching the times as they are strings, perhaps convert key(original time) back to a date first and then do it, but I am pretty new to c#

Answer 1

If you convert (or keep) them both to DateTimes you can use TimeSpan:

TimeSpan delta = dateTime1 - dateTime2;
if (Math.Abs(delta.TotalMinutes) <= 5) { ... }

Look into using the DateTime.ParseExact (or any of the Parse… methods) to parse your strKeyTime, and then do something similar to the above.