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

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 
#include 

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