How to calculate the CPU usage of a process by PID in Linux from C?

I wrote two little C function based on cafs answer to calculate the user+kernel cpu usage of of an process: https://github.com/fho/code_snippets/blob/master/c/getusage.c

This is my solution...

/*
this program is looking for CPU,Memory,Procs also u can look glibtop header there was a lot of usefull function have fun..
systeminfo.c
*/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <glibtop.h>
#include <glibtop/cpu.h>
#include <glibtop/mem.h>
#include <glibtop/proclist.h>



int main(){

glibtop_init();

glibtop_cpu cpu;
glibtop_mem memory;
glibtop_proclist proclist;

glibtop_get_cpu (&cpu);
glibtop_get_mem(&memory);


printf("CPU TYPE INFORMATIONS \n\n"
"Cpu Total : %ld \n"
"Cpu User : %ld \n"
"Cpu Nice : %ld \n"
"Cpu Sys : %ld \n"
"Cpu Idle : %ld \n"
"Cpu Frequences : %ld \n",
(unsigned long)cpu.total,
(unsigned long)cpu.user,
(unsigned long)cpu.nice,
(unsigned long)cpu.sys,
(unsigned long)cpu.idle,
(unsigned long)cpu.frequency);

printf("\nMEMORY USING\n\n"
"Memory Total : %ld MB\n"
"Memory Used : %ld MB\n"
"Memory Free : %ld MB\n"
"Memory Buffered : %ld MB\n"
"Memory Cached : %ld MB\n"
"Memory user : %ld MB\n"
"Memory Locked : %ld MB\n",
(unsigned long)memory.total/(1024*1024),
(unsigned long)memory.used/(1024*1024),
(unsigned long)memory.free/(1024*1024),
(unsigned long)memory.shared/(1024*1024),
(unsigned long)memory.buffer/(1024*1024),
(unsigned long)memory.cached/(1024*1024),
(unsigned long)memory.user/(1024*1024),
(unsigned long)memory.locked/(1024*1024));

int which,arg;
glibtop_get_proclist(&proclist,which,arg);
printf("%ld\n%ld\n%ld\n",
(unsigned long)proclist.number,
(unsigned long)proclist.total,
(unsigned long)proclist.size);
return 0;
}

makefile is
CC=gcc
CFLAGS=-Wall -g
CLIBS=-lgtop-2.0 -lgtop_sysdeps-2.0 -lgtop_common-2.0

cpuinfo:cpu.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) systeminfo.c -o systeminfo $(CLIBS)
clean:
rm -f systeminfo

Install psacct or acct package. Then use the sa command to display CPU time used for various commands. sa man page

A nice howto from the nixCraft site.

Use strace found the CPU usage need to be calculated by a time period:

# top -b -n 1 -p 3889
top - 16:46:37 up  1:04,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.02
Tasks:   1 total,   0 running,   1 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni,100.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem :  5594496 total,  5158284 free,   232132 used,   204080 buff/cache
KiB Swap:  3309564 total,  3309564 free,        0 used.  5113756 avail Mem 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
 3889 root      20   0  162016   2220   1544 S   0.0  0.0   0:05.77 top

# strace top -b -n 1 -p 3889

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.
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stat("/proc/3889", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0555, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
open("/proc/3889/stat", O_RDONLY)       = 7
read(7, "3889 (top) S 3854 3889 3854 3481"..., 1024) = 342
.
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.

nanosleep({0, 150000000}, NULL)         = 0
.
.
.
stat("/proc/3889", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0555, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
open("/proc/3889/stat", O_RDONLY)       = 7
read(7, "3889 (top) S 3854 3889 3854 3481"..., 1024) = 342
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htop -p <pid-of-process> . It will list all the cpus and their utilisation.