Get current time as formatted string in Go?

What's the best way to get the current timestamp in Go and convert to string? I need both date and time in eg. YYYYMMDDhhmmss format.

Use the time.Now() function and the time.Format() method.

t := time.Now()
fmt.Println(t.Format("20060102150405"))

prints out 20110504111515, or at least it did a few minutes ago. (I'm on Eastern Daylight Time.) There are several pre-defined time formats in the constants defined in the time package.

You can use time.Now().UTC() if you'd rather have UTC than your local time zone.

All the other response are very miss-leading for somebody coming from google and looking for "timestamp in go"! YYYYMMDDhhmmss is not a "timestamp".

To get the "timestamp" of a date in go (number of seconds from january 1970), the correct function is Time.Unix(), and it really return an integer

For readability, best to use the RFC constants in the time package (me thinks)

import "fmt" 
import "time"

func main() {
	fmt.Println(time.Now().Format(time.RFC850))
}

Use the time.Now() and time.Format() functions (as time.LocalTime() doesn't exist anymore as of Go 1.0.3)

t := time.Now()
fmt.Println(t.Format("20060102150405"))

Online demo (with date fixed in the past in the playground, never mind)

Find more info in this post: Get current date and time in various format in golang

This is a taste of the different formats that you'll find:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    currentTime := time.Now()
    fmt.Println("Current Time in String: ", currentTime.String())
    fmt.Println("MM-DD-YYYY : ", currentTime.Format("01-02-2006"))
    fmt.Println("YYYY-MM-DD : ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02"))
    fmt.Println("YYYY.MM.DD : ", currentTime.Format("2006.01.02 15:04:05"))
    fmt.Println("YYYY#MM#DD {Special Character} : ", currentTime.Format("2006#01#02"))
    fmt.Println("YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss : ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 15:04:05"))
    fmt.Println("Time with MicroSeconds: ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 15:04:05.000000"))
    fmt.Println("Time with NanoSeconds: ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 15:04:05.000000000"))
    fmt.Println("ShortNum Month : ", currentTime.Format("2006-1-02"))
    fmt.Println("LongMonth : ", currentTime.Format("2006-January-02"))
    fmt.Println("ShortMonth : ", currentTime.Format("2006-Jan-02"))
    fmt.Println("ShortYear : ", currentTime.Format("06-Jan-02"))
    fmt.Println("LongWeekDay : ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 15:04:05 Monday"))
    fmt.Println("ShortWeek Day : ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 Mon"))
    fmt.Println("ShortDay : ", currentTime.Format("Mon 2006-01-2"))
    fmt.Println("Short Hour Minute Second: ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 3:4:5"))
    fmt.Println("Short Hour Minute Second: ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 3:4:5 PM"))
    fmt.Println("Short Hour Minute Second: ", currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 3:4:5 pm"))
}

The output is:

Current Time in String:  2017-07-04 00:47:20.1424751 +0530 IST
MM-DD-YYYY :  07-04-2017
YYYY-MM-DD :  2017-07-04
YYYY.MM.DD :  2017.07.04 00:47:20
YYYY#MM#DD {Special Character} :  2017#07#04
YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss :  2017-07-04 00:47:20
Time with MicroSeconds:  2017-07-04 00:47:20.142475
Time with NanoSeconds:  2017-07-04 00:47:20.142475100
ShortNum Month :  2017-7-04
LongMonth :  2017-July-04
ShortMonth :  2017-Jul-04
ShortYear :  17-Jul-04
LongWeekDay :  2017-07-04 00:47:20 Tuesday
ShortWeek Day :  2017-07-04 Tue
ShortDay :  Tue 2017-07-4
Short Hour Minute Second:  2017-07-04 12:47:20
Short Hour Minute Second:  2017-07-04 12:47:20 AM
Short Hour Minute Second:  2017-07-04 12:47:20 am

https://golang.org/src/time/format.go specified
For parsing time 15 is used for Hours, 04 is used for minutes, 05 for seconds.

For parsing Date 11, Jan, January is for months, 02, Mon, Monday for Day of the month, 2006 for year and of course MST for zone

But you can use this layout as well, which I find very simple. "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006"

    const layout = "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006"
    userTimeString := "Fri Dec 6 13:05:05 CET 2019"

	t, _ := time.Parse(layout, userTimeString)
	fmt.Println("Server: ", t.Format(time.RFC850))
    //Server:  Friday, 06-Dec-19 13:05:05 CET

	mumbai, _ := time.LoadLocation("Asia/Kolkata")
	mumbaiTime := t.In(mumbai)
	fmt.Println("Mumbai: ", mumbaiTime.Format(time.RFC850))
    //Mumbai:  Friday, 06-Dec-19 18:35:05 IST

DEMO

You can simply use like strconv.Itoa(int(time.Now().Unix()))

As an echo to @Bactisme's response, the way one would go about retrieving the current timestamp (in milliseconds, for example) is:

msec := time.Now().UnixNano() / 1000000

Resource: https://gobyexample.com/epoch

To answer the exact question:

import "github.com/golang/protobuf/ptypes"
Timestamp, _ = ptypes.TimestampProto(time.Now())