How to get current time and date in C++?

Question

Is there a cross-platform way to get the current date and time in C++?

Answer 1

You can try the following cross-platform code to get current date/time:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

// Get current date/time, format is YYYY-MM-DD.HH:mm:ss
const std::string currentDateTime() {
    time_t     now = time(0);
    struct tm  tstruct;
    char       buf[80];
    tstruct = *localtime(&now);
    // Visit http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/chrono/c/strftime
    // for more information about date/time format
    strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%Y-%m-%d.%X", &tstruct);

    return buf;
}

int main() {
    std::cout << "currentDateTime()=" << currentDateTime() << std::endl;
    getchar();  // wait for keyboard input
}

Output:

currentDateTime()=2012-05-06.21:47:59

Please visit here for more information about date/time format

Answer 2

(For fellow googlers)

There is also Boost::date_time :

#include <boost/date_time/posix_time/posix_time.hpp>

boost::posix_time::ptime date_time = boost::posix_time::microsec_clock::universal_time();

Answer 3

This works with G++ I'm not sure if this helps you. Program output:

The current time is 11:43:41 am
The current date is 6-18-2015 June Wednesday 
Day of month is 17 and the Month of year is 6,
also the day of year is 167 & our Weekday is 3.
The current year is 2015.

Code :

#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

using namespace std;

const std::string currentTime() {
time_t now = time(0);
struct tm tstruct;
char buf[80];
tstruct = *localtime(&now);
strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%H:%M:%S %P", &tstruct);
return buf;
}

const std::string currentDate() {
time_t now = time(0);
struct tm tstruct;
char buf[80];
tstruct = *localtime(&now);
strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%B %A ", &tstruct);
return buf;
}

int main() {
    cout << "\033[2J\033[1;1H"; 
std:cout << "The current time is " << currentTime() << std::endl;
    time_t t = time(0);   // get time now
    struct tm * now = localtime( & t );
    cout << "The current date is " << now->tm_mon + 1 << '-' 
         << (now->tm_mday  + 1) << '-'
         <<  (now->tm_year + 1900) 
         << " " << currentDate() << endl; 

 cout << "Day of month is " << (now->tm_mday) 
      << " and the Month of year is " << (now->tm_mon)+1 << "," << endl;
    cout << "also the day of year is " << (now->tm_yday) 
         << " & our Weekday is " << (now->tm_wday) << "." << endl;
    cout << "The current year is " << (now->tm_year)+1900 << "." 
         << endl;
 return 0;  
}

Answer 4

You could use boost:

#include <boost/date_time/gregorian/gregorian.hpp>
#include <iostream>
using namespace boost::gregorian;

int main()
{
    date d = day_clock::universal_day();
    std::cout << d.day() << " " << d.month() << " " << d.year();
}

Answer 5

I found this link pretty useful for my implementation: C++ Date and Time

Here's the code I use in my implementation, to get a clear "YYYYMMDD HHMMSS" output format. The param in is for switching between UTC and local time. You can easily modify my code to suite your need.

#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>

using namespace std;

/**
 * This function gets the current date time
 * @param useLocalTime true if want to use local time, default to false (UTC)
 * @return current datetime in the format of "YYYYMMDD HHMMSS"
 */

string getCurrentDateTime(bool useLocalTime) {
    stringstream currentDateTime;
    // current date/time based on current system
    time_t ttNow = time(0);
    tm * ptmNow;

    if (useLocalTime)
        ptmNow = localtime(&ttNow);
    else
        ptmNow = gmtime(&ttNow);

    currentDateTime << 1900 + ptmNow->tm_year;

    //month
    if (ptmNow->tm_mon < 9)
        //Fill in the leading 0 if less than 10
        currentDateTime << "0" << 1 + ptmNow->tm_mon;
    else
        currentDateTime << (1 + ptmNow->tm_mon);

    //day
    if (ptmNow->tm_mday < 10)
        currentDateTime << "0" << ptmNow->tm_mday << " ";
    else
        currentDateTime <<  ptmNow->tm_mday << " ";

    //hour
    if (ptmNow->tm_hour < 10)
        currentDateTime << "0" << ptmNow->tm_hour;
    else
        currentDateTime << ptmNow->tm_hour;

    //min
    if (ptmNow->tm_min < 10)
        currentDateTime << "0" << ptmNow->tm_min;
    else
        currentDateTime << ptmNow->tm_min;

    //sec
    if (ptmNow->tm_sec < 10)
        currentDateTime << "0" << ptmNow->tm_sec;
    else
        currentDateTime << ptmNow->tm_sec;


    return currentDateTime.str();
}

Output (UTC, EST):

20161123 000454
20161122 190454

Answer 6

The ffead-cpp provides multiple utility classes for various tasks, one such class is the Date class which provides a lot of features right from Date operations to date arithmetic, there's also a Timer class provided for timing operations. You can have a look at the same.