Sum of TimeSpans in C#

Solution 1:

Unfortunately, there isn't a an overload of Sum that accepts an IEnumerable<TimeSpan>. Additionally, there's no current way of specifying operator-based generic constraints for type-parameters, so even though TimeSpan is "natively" summable, that fact can't be picked up easily by generic code.

One option would be to, as you say, sum up an integral-type equivalent to the timespan instead, and then turn that sum into a TimeSpan again. The ideal property for this is TimeSpan.Ticks, which round-trips accurately. But it's not necessary to change the property-type on your class at all; you can just project:

var totalSpan = new TimeSpan(myCollection.Sum(r => r.TheDuration.Ticks));

Alternatively, if you want to stick to the TimeSpan's + operator to do the summing, you can use the Aggregate operator:

var totalSpan = myCollection.Aggregate
                (TimeSpan.Zero, 
                (sumSoFar, nextMyObject) => sumSoFar + nextMyObject.TheDuration);

Solution 2:

This works well (code based on Ani's answer)

public static class StatisticExtensions
{    
    public static TimeSpan Sum<TSource>(this IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TimeSpan> selector)
    {
        return source.Select(selector).Aggregate(TimeSpan.Zero, (t1, t2) => t1 + t2);
    }
}

Usage :

If Periods is a list of objects with a Duration property

TimeSpan total = Periods.Sum(s => s.Duration)

Solution 3:

I believe this is the cleanest LINQ extension:

public static class LinqExtensions
{
    public static TimeSpan Sum<TSource>(this IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TimeSpan> func)
    {
        return new TimeSpan(source.Sum(item => func(item).Ticks));
    }
}

Usage is the same:

TimeSpan total = Periods.Sum(s => s.Duration)

Solution 4:

Here's what I tried and it worked:

System.Collections.Generic.List<MyObject> collection = new List<MyObject>();
MyObject mb = new MyObject();
mb.TheDuration = new TimeSpan(100000);
collection.Add(mb);
mb.TheDuration = new TimeSpan(100000);
collection.Add(mb);
mb.TheDuration = new TimeSpan(100000);
collection.Add(mb);
var sum = (from r in collection select r.TheDuration.Ticks).Sum();
Console.WriteLine( sum.ToString());
//here we have new timespan that is sum of all time spans
TimeSpan sumedup = new TimeSpan(sum);


public class MyObject
{
    public TimeSpan TheDuration { get; set; }
}

Solution 5:

I put this in a class to add an extension method to a collection of timespans:

public static class Extensions:
{
    public static TimeSpan TotalTime(this IEnumerable<TimeSpan> TheCollection)
    {
        int i = 0;
        int TotalSeconds = 0;

        var ArrayDuration = TheCollection.ToArray();

        for (i = 0; i < ArrayDuration.Length; i++)
        {
            TotalSeconds = (int)(ArrayDuration[i].TotalSeconds) + TotalSeconds;
        }

        return TimeSpan.FromSeconds(TotalSeconds);
    }
}

So now, I can write TotalDuration = (my LINQ query that returns a collection of timespan).TotalTime();

Voila!