New answer for old question. Rationale for the new answer: The question was edited from its original form because tools at the time would not handle exactly what was being asked. And the resulting accepted answer gives a subtly different behavior than what the original question asked for.
I'm not trying to put down the accepted answer. It's a good answer. It's just that the C API is so confusing that it is inevitable that mistakes like this will happen.
The original question was to parse "Thu, 9 Jan 2014 12:35:34 +0000"
. So clearly the intent was to parse a timestamp representing a UTC time. But strptime
(which isn't standard C or C++, but is POSIX) does not parse the trailing UTC offset indicating this is a UTC timestamp (it will format it with %z
, but not parse it).
The question was then edited to ask about "Thu Jan 9 12:35:34 2014"
. But the question was not edited to clarify if this was a UTC timestamp, or a timestamp in the computer's current local timezone. The accepted answer implicitly assumes the timestamp represents the computer's current local timezone because of the use of std::mktime
.
std::mktime
not only transforms the field type tm
to the serial type time_t
, it also performs an offset adjustment from the computer's local time zone to UTC.
But what if we want to parse a UTC timestamp as the original (unedited) question asked?
That can be done today using this newer, free open-source library.
#include "date/date.h"
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
int
main()
{
using namespace std;
using namespace date;
istringstream in{"Thu, 9 Jan 2014 12:35:34 +0000"};
sys_seconds tp;
in >> parse("%a, %d %b %Y %T %z", tp);
}
This library can parse %z
. And date::sys_seconds
is just a typedef for:
std::chrono::time_point<std::chrono::system_clock, std::chrono::seconds>
The question also asks:
From the resulting duration I need access to the numbers of seconds, minutes, hours and days.
That part has remained unanswered. Here's how you do it with this library.
#include "date/date.h"
#include <chrono>
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
int
main()
{
using namespace std;
using namespace date;
istringstream in{"Thu, 9 Jan 2014 12:35:34 +0000"};
sys_seconds tp;
in >> parse("%a, %d %b %Y %T %z", tp);
auto tp_days = floor<days>(tp);
auto hms = hh_mm_ss<seconds>{tp - tp_days};
std::cout << "Number of days = " << tp_days.time_since_epoch() << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of hours = " << hms.hours() << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of minutes = " << hms.minutes() << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of seconds = " << hms.seconds() << '\n';
}
floor<days>
truncates the seconds-precision time_point
to a days-precision time_point
. If you subtract the days-precision time_point
from tp
, you're left with a duration
that represents the time since midnight (UTC).
The type hh_mm_ss<seconds>
takes any duration
convertible to seconds
(in this case time since midnight) and creates a {hours, minutes, seconds}
field type with getters for each field. If the duration has precision finer than seconds this field type will also have a getter for the subseconds. Prior to C++17, one has to specify that finer duration as the template parameter. In C++17 and later it can be deduced:
auto hms = hh_mm_ss{tp - tp_days};
Finally, one can just print out all of these durations. This example outputs:
Number of days = 16079d
Number of hours = 12h
Number of minutes = 35min
Number of seconds = 34s
So 2014-01-09 is 16079 days after 1970-01-01.
Here is the full example but at milliseconds
precision:
#include "date/date.h"
#include <chrono>
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
int
main()
{
using namespace std;
using namespace std::chrono;
using namespace date;
istringstream in{"Thu, 9 Jan 2014 12:35:34.123 +0000"};
sys_time<milliseconds> tp;
in >> parse("%a, %d %b %Y %T %z", tp);
auto tp_days = floor<days>(tp);
hh_mm_ss hms{tp - tp_days};
std::cout << tp << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of days = " << tp_days.time_since_epoch() << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of hours = " << hms.hours() << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of minutes = " << hms.minutes() << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of seconds = " << hms.seconds() << '\n';
std::cout << "Number of milliseconds = " << hms.subseconds() << '\n';
}
Output:
2014-01-09 12:35:34.123
Number of days = 16079d
Number of hours = 12h
Number of minutes = 35min
Number of seconds = 34s
Number of milliseconds = 123ms
This library is now part of C++20, but is in namespace std::chrono
and found in the header <chrono>
.
strptime
that parses a string into atm
structure. Unfortunately it doesn't exist for Windows, but there are alternatives. – Fishy+0000
at the end, though? – Speedwritingtime_point
with an actual date is not at the core of its functionality. Boost tried to address this in its Date Time library which predates Chrono. Unfortunately, those two libraries don't go together as smoothly as one might wish. – Rorqual