Simple Real World Time/Date extraction using HTTP API

I was looking for a simple way to get the real world time and date so that I could use it for a log system for my reactor/turbine program but I couldn't see one.

So I wrote my own. It's really just a pattern matching routine, so you could use it to extract any sort of data from a web page.

http://pastebin.com/vFMvqQ97

-- get the web page with the correct time on it - change as appropriate
local file = http.get("http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/uk/london")

-- define patterns to locate date/time in web page
local timematch = "<span id="ct" class="h1">"
local datematch = "<span id="ctdat">"
local endmatch = "</span>"

if file == nil then
  -- if web page cannot be opened, display error
  print("Can't open webpage.")
else
  -- loop through each line of web page
  while true do
	-- read line
	local ver = file.readLine()
	-- if nil then at the end of the page, break out of loop
	if ver == nil then break end
	-- find the time pattern
	p = string.find(ver,timematch)
	-- if found,
	if p ~= nil then
	  -- get the position of the end pattern
	  q = string.find(ver,endmatch,p)
	  -- get the string inbetween
	  t = string.sub(ver,p+string.len(timematch),q-1)
	  -- output time
	  write("Time: ")
	  print(t)
	end
	-- find the date pattern
	p = string.find(ver,datematch)
	-- if found,
	if p ~= nil then
	  -- get the position of the end pattern
	  q = string.find(ver,endmatch,p)
	  -- get the string inbetween
	  d = string.sub(ver,p+string.len(datematch),q-1)
	  -- output date
	  write("Date: ")
	  print(d)
	end
  end
end

Thanks for sharing, I will definetly be using this. :)/>