Creating Dynamic Year Values

I absolutely hate when forms and web sites lack common intelligence. Copyright years should always show the current year. Year Dropdown Lists should always have the most recent values. We’re living in a dynamic world where information is always changing.. there’s no excuse for having static content hard coded into page templates!

I use this little function to get an ArrayList of the current year and the two years previous to it. There’s really nothing to it…. but by calling this, all the “Select a Year” fields on my forms update every year, without a single line of hardcoded values needing to be changed. Ever again.

        public static ArrayList GetAcceptableYears()
        {
            ArrayList AcceptableYears = new ArrayList();

            AcceptableYears.Add(DateTime.Now.Year - 2).ToString();
            AcceptableYears.Add(DateTime.Now.Year - 1).ToString();
            AcceptableYears.Add(DateTime.Now.Year).ToString();

            return AcceptableYears;
        }