Question

I’m doing up an application that converts the STRING duration of a media file in C#.
How do I make it so that the output are as follows:

a. 1:34 (1min 34 sec) to
00:01:34

b. 0:05 (5 seconds) to
00:00:05

c. 1:10:05 to 01:10:05

Result will be displayed in a label named lblDuration.

I am using VS2008 C#.

Thanks if you can help.

Answer 1

I would parse it as a TimeSpan, and then reformat it using

string text = timeSpan.ToString("hh':'mm':'ss");

This is assuming you’re using .NET 4 with its support for custom TimeSpan formats. Before .NET 4 you’d have to write it yourself – not too hard, but harder than the above.

Parsing the timespan to start with is a different matter – you could use TimeSpan.TryParseExact passing in multiple formats, for example.

The benefit of parsing and then reformatting is that you’ll validate that you’ve got sensible date – e.g. not “99:99”.