Overview

In this tutorial, we will see how to get the current timestamp using the time package in Go. The current time can be represented in different ways

• time.Time object

t := time.Now() //It will return time.Time object with current timestamp

• Unix Time (Also known as Epoch Time) – It is the number of seconds elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970. This time is also known as the Unix epoch.

t := time.Now().Unix() 
//Will return number of seconds passed since Unix epoch

• Unix Nano –  It is number of nanoseconds elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970

t := time.Now().UnixNano() 
//Will return number of nano seconds passed since Unix epoch

• Unix MilliSecond – It is the number of milliseconds elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970

t:= int64(time.Nanosecond) * t.UnixNano() / int64(time.Millisecond)/ time.Millisecond  
//Number of millisecond elapsed since Unix epoch

• Unix MicroSecond – It is the number of microseconds elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970

t:= int64(time.Nanosecond) * t.UnixNano() / int64(time.Millisecond)/ time.Millisecond  
//Number of millisecond elapsed since Unix epoch

Code

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    t := time.Now() //It will return time.Time object with current timestamp
    fmt.Printf("time.Time %s\n", t)

    tUnix := t.Unix()
    fmt.Printf("timeUnix: %d\n", tUnix)

    tUnixNano := t.UnixNano()
    fmt.Printf("timeUnixNano: %d\n", tUnixNano)

    tUnixMilli := int64(time.Nanosecond) * t.UnixNano() / int64(time.Millisecond)
    fmt.Printf("timeUnixMilli: %d\n", tUnixMilli)

    tUnixMicro := int64(time.Nanosecond) * t.UnixNano() / int64(time.Microsecond)
    fmt.Printf("timeUnixMicro: %d\n", tUnixMicro)
}

Output:

time.Time 2020-01-24 09:43:42.196901 UTC m=+0.000229700
timeUnix: 1579839222
timeUnixNano: 1579839222196901000
timeUnixMilli: 1579839222196
timeUnixMicro: 1579839222196901