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

Question

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?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1329900/net-event-every-minute-on-the-minute-is-a-timer-the-best-option

Answer 1

Building on the answer from aquinas which can drift and which doesn't tick exactly on the minute just within one second of the minute:

static System.Timers.Timer t;

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    t = new System.Timers.Timer();
    t.AutoReset = false;
    t.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(t_Elapsed);
    t.Interval = GetInterval();
    t.Start();
    Console.ReadLine();
}

static double GetInterval()
{
    DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
    return ((60 - now.Second) * 1000 - now.Millisecond);
}

static void t_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.ToString("o"));
    t.Interval = GetInterval();
    t.Start();
}

On my box this code ticks consistently within .02s of each minute:

2010-01-15T16:42:00.0040001-05:00
2010-01-15T16:43:00.0014318-05:00
2010-01-15T16:44:00.0128643-05:00
2010-01-15T16:45:00.0132961-05:00