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

auto time = std::time(nullptr);
std::cout << std::put_time(std::localtime(&time), "%F %T%z"); // ISO 8601 format.

Get the current time either using std::time() or std::chrono::system_clock::now() (or another clock type).

std::put_time() (C++11) and strftime() (C) offer a lot of formatters to output those times.

#include 
#include 

int main() {
    auto time = std::time(nullptr);
    std::cout
        // ISO 8601: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S, e.g. 2017-07-31 00:42:00+0200.
        << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%F %T%z") << '\n'
        // %m/%d/%y, e.g. 07/31/17
        << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%D"); 
}

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The sequence of the formatters matters:

std::cout << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%c %A %Z") << std::endl;
// Mon Jul 31 00:00:42 2017 Monday GMT
std::cout << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%Z %c %A") << std::endl;
// GMT Mon Jul 31 00:00:42 2017 Monday

The formatters of strftime() are similar:

char output[100];
if (std::strftime(output, sizeof(output), "%F", std::gmtime(&time))) {
    std::cout << output << '\n'; // %Y-%m-%d, e.g. 2017-07-31
}

Often, the capital formatter means "full version" and lowercase means abbreviation (e.g. Y: 2017, y: 17).

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Locale settings alter the output:

#include 
#include 
int main() {
    auto time = std::time(nullptr);
    std::cout << "undef: " << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%c") << '\n';
    std::cout.imbue(std::locale("en_US.utf8"));
    std::cout << "en_US: " << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%c") << '\n';
    std::cout.imbue(std::locale("en_GB.utf8"));
    std::cout << "en_GB: " << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%c") << '\n';
    std::cout.imbue(std::locale("de_DE.utf8"));
    std::cout << "de_DE: " << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%c") << '\n';
    std::cout.imbue(std::locale("ja_JP.utf8"));
    std::cout << "ja_JP: " << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%c") << '\n';
    std::cout.imbue(std::locale("ru_RU.utf8"));
    std::cout << "ru_RU: " << std::put_time(std::gmtime(&time), "%c");        
}

Possible output (Coliru, Compiler Explorer):

undef: Tue Aug  1 08:29:30 2017
en_US: Tue 01 Aug 2017 08:29:30 AM GMT
en_GB: Tue 01 Aug 2017 08:29:30 GMT
de_DE: Di 01 Aug 2017 08:29:30 GMT
ja_JP: 2017年08月01日 08時29分30秒
ru_RU: Вт 01 авг 2017 08:29:30

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I've used std::gmtime() for conversion to UTC. std::localtime() is provided to convert to local time.

Heed that asctime()/ctime() which were mentioned in other answers are marked as deprecated now and strftime() should be preferred.