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

C++ shares its date/time functions with C. The tm structure is probably the easiest for a C++ programmer to work with - the following prints today's date:

#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::time_t t = std::time(0);   // get time now
    std::tm* now = std::localtime(&t);
    std::cout << (now->tm_year + 1900) << '-' 
         << (now->tm_mon + 1) << '-'
         <<  now->tm_mday
         << "\n";
}

Answer 2

#include <Windows.h>

void main()
{
     //Following is a structure to store date / time

SYSTEMTIME SystemTime, LocalTime;

    //To get the local time

int loctime = GetLocalTime(&LocalTime);

    //To get the system time

int systime = GetSystemTime(&SystemTime)

}

Answer 3

This compiled for me on Linux (RHEL) and Windows (x64) targeting g++ and OpenMP:

#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <locale>

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
//  Reports a time-stamped update to the console; format is:
//       Name: Update: Year-Month-Day_of_Month Hour:Minute:Second
//
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
//  [string] strName  :  name of the update object
//  [string] strUpdate:  update descripton
//          
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

void ReportTimeStamp(string strName, string strUpdate)
{
    try
    {
        #ifdef _WIN64
            //  Current time
            const time_t tStart = time(0);
            //  Current time structure
            struct tm tmStart;

            localtime_s(&tmStart, &tStart);

            //  Report
            cout << strName << ": " << strUpdate << ": " << (1900 + tmStart.tm_year) << "-" << tmStart.tm_mon << "-" << tmStart.tm_mday << " " << tmStart.tm_hour << ":" << tmStart.tm_min << ":" << tmStart.tm_sec << "\n\n";
        #else
            //  Current time
            const time_t tStart = time(0);
            //  Current time structure
            struct tm* tmStart;

            tmStart = localtime(&tStart);

            //  Report
            cout << strName << ": " << strUpdate << ": " << (1900 + tmStart->tm_year) << "-" << tmStart->tm_mon << "-" << tmStart->tm_mday << " " << tmStart->tm_hour << ":" << tmStart->tm_min << ":" << tmStart->tm_sec << "\n\n";
        #endif

    }
    catch (exception ex)
    {
        cout << "ERROR [ReportTimeStamp] Exception Code:  " << ex.what() << "\n";
    }

    return;
}

Answer 4

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ctime/strftime/

This built-in seems to offer a reasonable set of options.

Answer 5

In C++ 11 you can use std::chrono::system_clock::now()

Example (copied from en.cppreference.com):

#include <iostream>
#include <chrono>
#include <ctime>    

int main()
{
    auto start = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
    // Some computation here
    auto end = std::chrono::system_clock::now();

    std::chrono::duration<double> elapsed_seconds = end-start;
    std::time_t end_time = std::chrono::system_clock::to_time_t(end);

    std::cout << "finished computation at " << std::ctime(&end_time)
              << "elapsed time: " << elapsed_seconds.count() << "s\n";
}

This should print something like this:

finished computation at Mon Oct  2 00:59:08 2017
elapsed time: 1.88232s

Answer 6

std C libraries provide time(). This is seconds from the epoch and can be converted to date and H:M:S using standard C functions. Boost also has a time/date library that you can check.

time_t  timev;
time(&timev);