Convert HL7 DoB to a human-readable format. (PID:7)

Used the following code to convert PID:7 (Date of Birth) into a human-readable format.

local dob = Orig.PID[7]:D():sub(1,10):D()
dob = dob:sub(9,10)..”-“..dob:sub(6,7)..”-“..dob:sub(1,4)

input:
PID|1||122454^^^PAS^PI~1380066^^^PAS^MR^””~1234567890^^^NHS^NH||DYLAN^BOB^””^^MR||19780201|M

Output:
01-02-1978

This works fine but I wonder if there are there are any date functions that I can use to convert the date into this format (dd-mm-yyyy).

I guess the editor replaced D with the smiley faces.

local dob = Orig.PID[7]:D():sub(1,10):D()
dob = dob:sub(9,10)..”-“..dob:sub(6,7)..”-“..dob:sub(1,4)

Add to custom String module extension (to custom shared module, let’s say its name is ‘strings’)

string:D2(fmt)
local t = dateparse.parse(self, fmt)
return t and os.date(‘%Y-%m-%d’, t)
end

Add to custom Node module extension (to custom shared module, let’s say its name is node)

function node:D2(fmt)
return tostring(self): D2(fmt)
end

require (‘dateparse’)
require(‘node’)
require(‘strings’)

local dob = Orig.PID[7]:D2()

yields DOB value in format YYYY-mm-DD

Great… Thanks Lev.