Please comment.

http://baseURL/name:Gupta,Anil%date:1956

http://baseURL/name:Gupta,Anil&date:1956

I think my best bet is not to convert to type datetime, but to try to match strings. So I wrote this dateclean.py (Python 3.7):

I think my best bet is not to convert to type datetime, but to try to match strings.

EDIT: because this way I can let the API do more work.

http://baseURL/name:Gupta,Anil%date:1956

Without the date, I get all Anil Gupta's. With it, I get all Anil Gupta's with either born year (most likely), death year, of year of activity 1956. All in all, this is MUCH less work than writing dateconverters for fields that are empty in 90% of the cases. In general, name + exact date of birth is a pretty unique identifier.

So I wrote this dateclean.py (Python 3.7):