To get the current date and time, use the now function:

julia> now()
2016-09-04T00:16:58.122

This is the local time, which includes the machine's configured time zone. To get the time in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone, use now(Dates.UTC):

julia> now(Dates.UTC)
2016-09-04T04:16:58.122

To get the current date, without the time, use today():

julia> Dates.today()
2016-10-30

The return value of now is a DateTime object. There are functions to get the individual components of a DateTime:

julia> t = now()
2016-09-04T00:16:58.122

julia> Dates.year(t)
2016

julia> Dates.month(t)
9

julia> Dates.day(t)
4

julia> Dates.hour(t)
0

julia> Dates.minute(t)
16

julia> Dates.second(t)
58

julia> Dates.millisecond(t)
122

It is possible to format a DateTime using a specially-formatted format string:

julia> Dates.format(t, "yyyy-mm-dd at HH:MM:SS")
"2016-09-04 at 00:16:58"

Since many of the Dates functions are exported from the Base.Dates module, it can save some typing to write

using Base.Dates

which then enables accessing the qualified functions above without the Dates. qualification.