Alex Rivera | Logout

.NET, event every minute (on the minute). Is a timer the best option?

Asked 2009-08-25T17:56:09.197
47

I want to do stuff every minute on the minute (by the clock) in a windows forms app using c#. I'm just wondering whats the best way to go about it ?

I could use a timer and set its interval to 60000, but to get it to run on the minute, I would have to enable it on the minute precisely, not really viable.

I could use a timer and set its interval to 1000. Then within its tick event, I could check the clocks current minute against a variable that I set, if the minute has changed then run my code. This worries me because I am making my computer do a check every 1 second in order to carry out work every 1 minutes. Surely this is ugly ?

I'm using windows forms and .Net 2.0 so do not want to use the DispatchTimer that comes with .Net 3.5

This must be a fairly common problem. Have any of you a better way to do this?

c# winforms timer
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You could set up two timers. An initial short interval timer (perhaps to fire every second, but dependent on how presice the second timer must fire on the minute).

You would fire the short interval timer only until the desired start time of the main interval timer is reached. Once the initial time is reached, the second main interval timer can be activated, and the short interval timer can be deactivated.

void StartTimer()
{

  shortIntervalTimer.Interval = 1000;
  mainIntervalTimer.Interval = 60000; 

  shortIntervalTimer.Tick += 
    new System.EventHandler(this.shortIntervalTimer_Tick);
  mainIntervalTimer.Tick += 
    new System.EventHandler(mainIntervalTimer_Tick);

  shortIntervalTimer.Start();

}

private void shortIntervalTimer_Tick(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
  if (DateTime.Now.Second == 0)
    {
      mainIntervalTimer.Start();
      shortIntervalTimer.Stop();
    }
}

private void mainIntervalTimer_Tick(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
  // do what you need here //
}
answered 2009-09-03T10:05:23.873

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