title: How can I create Date Object from Date and Time Strings in Lua NodeMCU?
body: <p>I am playing around with NodeMCU on an ESP8266. I have a Date String and a Time String from a Web Request like this:</p>
  
  <p><strong>15.07.16</strong> (German format DD.MM.YY)</p>
  
  <p><strong>19:50</strong> (24 hours format)</p>
  
  <p>These DateTimes lay usually a little bit in the future. I want to get the number of minutes from the current time to the time from my strings above.</p>
  
  <p>I guess I have to create a time object from the strings and then compare it to the current time. But how can I do that with Lua? </p>
  
  <p>Unfortunately there is no <strong>os</strong> Library on NodeMCU (or I might have missed how to enable it).</p>
  
  <p>Calculating the difference manually would be a huge pain which I would like to avoid. Does anyone know a way to compute that with available or external libraries?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for any support!</p>