Outputting Date and Time in C++ using std::chrono

Question

I have been upgrading some old code and have been trying to update to c++11 where possible. The following code is how I used to display the time and date in my program

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

const std::string return_current_time_and_date() const
{
    time_t now = time(0);
    struct tm tstruct;
    char buf[80];
    tstruct = *localtime(&now);
    strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%Y-%m-%d %X", &tstruct);
    return buf;
}

I would like to output the current time and date in a similar format using std::chrono(or similar) but am unsure how to go about doing so. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

The <chrono> library only deals with time and not dates, except for the system_clock which has the ability to convert its timepoints to time_t. So using <chrono> for dates will not improve things much. Hopefully we get something like chrono::date in the not too distant future.

That said, you can use <chrono> in the following way:

#include <chrono>  // chrono::system_clock
#include <ctime>   // localtime
#include <sstream> // stringstream
#include <iomanip> // put_time
#include <string>  // string

std::string return_current_time_and_date()
{
    auto now = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
    auto in_time_t = std::chrono::system_clock::to_time_t(now);

    std::stringstream ss;
    ss << std::put_time(std::localtime(&in_time_t), "%Y-%m-%d %X");
    return ss.str();
}

Note that std::localtime may cause data races. localtime_r or similar functions may be available on your platforms.

Update:

Using a new version of Howard Hinnant's date library you can write:

#include "date.h"
#include <chrono>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>

std::string return_current_time_and_date() {
  auto now = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
  auto today = date::floor<days>(now);

  std::stringstream ss;
  ss << today << ' ' << date::make_time(now - today) << " UTC";
  return ss.str();
}

This will print out something like "2015-07-24 05:15:34.043473124 UTC".

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On an unrelated note, returning const objects has become undesirable with C++11; const return values cannot be moved from. I also removed the trailing const because trailing const is only valid for member functions and this function has no need to be a member.