Create a date time with month and day only, no year

Question

I am creating a timer job in VS for sharepoint, and I want to create a Date object that only has a month and day. The reason for this is because I want this job to run annually on the specific date.

If it's not possible with a date object, then how would you go about doing this?

Here's what I've got:

DateTime value = new DateTime(2010, 1, 18);

Answer 1

Well, you can create your own type - but a DateTime always has a full date and time. You can't even have "just a date" using DateTime - the closest you can come is to have a DateTime at midnight.

You could always ignore the year though - or take the current year:

// Consider whether you want DateTime.UtcNow.Year instead
DateTime value = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.Year, month, day);

To create your own type, you could always just embed a DateTime within a struct, and proxy on calls like AddDays etc:

public struct MonthDay : IEquatable<MonthDay>
{
    private readonly DateTime dateTime;

    public MonthDay(int month, int day)
    {
        dateTime = new DateTime(2000, month, day);
    }

    public MonthDay AddDays(int days)
    {
        DateTime added = dateTime.AddDays(days);
        return new MonthDay(added.Month, added.Day);
    }

    // TODO: Implement interfaces, equality etc
}

Note that the year you choose affects the behaviour of the type - should Feb 29th be a valid month/day value or not? It depends on the year...

Personally I don't think I would create a type for this - instead I'd have a method to return "the next time the program should be run".

Answer 2

How about creating a timer with the next date?

In your timer callback you create the timer for the following year? DateTime has always a year value. What you want to express is a recurring time specification. This is another type which you would need to create. DateTime is always represents a specific date and time but not a recurring date.

Answer 3

There is no such thing like a DateTime without a year!

From what I gather your design is a bit strange:

I would recommend storing a "start" (DateTime including year for the FIRST occurence) and a value which designates how to calculate the next event... this could be for example a TimeSpan or some custom structure esp. since "every year" can mean that the event occurs on a specific date and would not automatically be the same as saysing that it occurs in +365 days.

After the event occurs you calculate the next and store that etc.