Time Bookings Visual Display

Question

I have a system which manages Vehicles and Staff, when you click on their name based on a date you should be able to see the times that they are available on that day.

Answer 1

Posting this answer because the OP requested it:

This is how you do that in WPF:

Code Behind:

public partial class TimeBookings : Window
{
    public TimeBookings()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        DataContext = new TimeBookingsViewModel();
    }
}

ViewModel:

public class TimeBookingsViewModel
{
    public ObservableCollection Available { get; set; } 

    public ObservableCollection Bookings { get; set; }

    public TimeBookingsViewModel()
    {
        Available = new ObservableCollection(Enumerable.Range(8, 11).Select(x => new DateTime(2013, 1, 1).AddHours(x))); 

        Bookings = new ObservableCollection(); 

        Bookings.Add(new TimeRange(8, 0, 9, 50) {Base = TimeSpan.FromHours(8)});
        Bookings.Add(new TimeRange(10, 0, 11, 00) { Base = TimeSpan.FromHours(8) });
        Bookings.Add(new TimeRange(12, 00, 13, 30) { Base = TimeSpan.FromHours(8) });
    }
}

Data Item:

public class TimeRange
{
    public TimeSpan Base { get; set; }

    public TimeSpan Start { get; set; }

    public TimeSpan End { get; set; }

    public string StartString { get { return new DateTime(Start.Ticks).ToString("hh:mm tt"); } }

    public string EndString { get { return new DateTime(End.Ticks).ToString("hh:mm tt"); } }

    public TimeRange(int starthour, int startminute, int endhour, int endminute)
    {
        Start = new TimeSpan(0, starthour, startminute, 0);
        End = new TimeSpan(0, endhour, endminute, 0);
    }
}

And a few helpers (Converters and such):

public class TimeRangeToVerticalMarginConverter : IValueConverter
{
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        if (!(value is TimeRange))
            return null;

        var range = (TimeRange) value;

        return new Thickness(2, range.Start.TotalMinutes - range.Base.TotalMinutes, 2, 0);
    }

    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}

public class TimeRangeHeightConverter : IValueConverter
{
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        if (!(value is TimeRange))
            return null;

        var range = value as TimeRange;

        return range.End.Subtract(range.Start).TotalMinutes;
    }

    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}

• The UI is separate from Data and Logic by using MVVM, DataBinding and The WPF Mentality
• This keeps your code behind almost empty and your application code really clean, by just dealing with your own classes and properties, and leaving the UI alone.
• No "owner draw", no P/Invoke (whatever that means), no complicated size/position calculations, and no crappy procedural "drawing code". Only beautiful declarative XAML and DataBinding to simple, simple properties.
• The UI is created by using 2 ItemsControls with different DataTemplates (one for the "background" hour boxes, and the other for the bookings visual representation)
• The "Booked" textblock is inside a Viewbox which makes it stretch to the available size. You can change that if you want, but I could not imagine a better way to make the text fit the available space for different bookings.
• I even took the time to add the nice descriptive ToolTip. You can really do what you want in WPF.
• I strongly suggest you read all the linked material in this post, mostly Rachel's "WPF Mentality" and related blog posts. Let me know if you need further help.

Bottom Line:

Forget winforms, it's too limited, it doesn't have (real) databinding, it requires a lot of code to do less, it does not support any level of customization, and it forces you to create shitty Windows 95 like UIs.

WPF Rocks: Just copy and paste my code in a File -> New Project -> WPF Application and see the results for yourself.