I use this little function to get a nicely formatted date and time:

#include <ctime>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

std::string stringftime(const char* format = "%c", const struct tm* tm = NULL)
{
    if (tm == NULL) {
        time_t t = std::time(NULL);
        tm = std::localtime(&t);
    }
    const size_t size = 256;
    std::vector<char> vtime(size);
    if (std::strftime(&vtime[0], size, format, tm) == 0) {
        vtime[0] = '\0';
    }
    return &vtime[0];
}

Example of its use:

#include <iostream>

int main (void)
{
    std::cout << stringftime() << "\n";
    std::cout << stringftime("Today is %A, %B %d.") << "\n";
    std::cout << stringftime("The time is %I:%M %p.") << "\n";
}

Fri Sep  9 16:07:58 2016
Today is Friday, September 09.
The time is 04:07 PM.

The format specifiers accepted are listed here: strftime.