Count number of Mondays in a given date range

Question

Given a date range, I need to know how many Mondays (or Tuesdays, Wednesdays, etc) are in that range.

I am currently working in C#.

Answer 1

It's fun to look at different algorithm's for calculating day of week, and @Gabe Hollombe's pointing to WP on the subject was a great idea (and I remember implementing Zeller's Congruence in COBOL about twenty years ago), but it was rather along the line of handing someone a blueprint of a clock when all they asked what time it was.

In C#:

    private int CountMondays(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate)
    {
        int mondayCount = 0;

        for (DateTime dt = startDate; dt < endDate; dt = dt.AddDays(1.0))
        {
            if (dt.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Monday)
            {
                mondayCount++;
            }
        }

        return mondayCount;
    }

This of course does not evaluate the end date for "Mondayness", so if this was desired, make the for loop evaluate

dt < endDate.AddDays(1.0)

Answer 2

I had a similar problem for a report. I needed the number of workdays between two dates. I could have cycled through the dates and counted but my discrete math training wouldn't let me. Here is a function I wrote in VBA to get the number of workdays between two dates. I'm sure .net has a similar WeekDay function.

   1  
   2  ' WorkDays
   3  ' returns the number of working days between two dates
   4  Public Function WorkDays(ByVal dtBegin As Date, ByVal dtEnd As Date) As Long
   5  
   6     Dim dtFirstSunday As Date
   7     Dim dtLastSaturday As Date
   8     Dim lngWorkDays As Long
   9  
  10     ' get first sunday in range
  11     dtFirstSunday = dtBegin + ((8 - Weekday(dtBegin)) Mod 7)
  12  
  13     ' get last saturday in range
  14     dtLastSaturday = dtEnd - (Weekday(dtEnd) Mod 7)
  15  
  16     ' get work days between first sunday and last saturday
  17     lngWorkDays = (((dtLastSaturday - dtFirstSunday) + 1) / 7) * 5
  18  
  19     ' if first sunday is not begin date
  20     If dtFirstSunday <> dtBegin Then
  21  
  22        ' assume first sunday is after begin date
  23        ' add workdays from begin date to first sunday
  24        lngWorkDays = lngWorkDays + (7 - Weekday(dtBegin))
  25  
  26     End If
  27  
  28     ' if last saturday is not end date
  29     If dtLastSaturday <> dtEnd Then
  30  
  31        ' assume last saturday is before end date
  32        ' add workdays from last saturday to end date
  33        lngWorkDays = lngWorkDays + (Weekday(dtEnd) - 1)
  34  
  35     End If
  36  
  37     ' return working days
  38     WorkDays = lngWorkDays
  39  
  40  End Function

Answer 3

Four years later, I thought I'd run a test:

[TestMethod]
public void ShouldFindFridaysInTimeSpan()
{
    //reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/248273/count-number-of-mondays-in-a-given-date-range

    var spanOfSixtyDays = new TimeSpan(60, 0, 0, 0);
    var setOfDates = new List<DateTime>(spanOfSixtyDays.Days);
    var now = DateTime.Now;

    for(int i = 0; i < spanOfSixtyDays.Days; i++)
    {
        setOfDates.Add(now.AddDays(i));
    }

    Assert.IsTrue(setOfDates.Count == 60,
        "The expected number of days is not here.");

    var fridays = setOfDates.Where(i => i.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Friday);

    Assert.IsTrue(fridays.Count() > 0,
        "The expected Friday days are not here.");
    Assert.IsTrue(fridays.First() == setOfDates.First(i => i.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Friday),
        "The expected first Friday day is not here.");
    Assert.IsTrue(fridays.Last() == setOfDates.Last(i => i.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Friday),
        "The expected last Friday day is not here.");
}

My use of TimeSpan is a bit of overkill---actually I wanted to query TimeSpan directly.