DateField returning string instead of date object

[Gary Aleixo]

I'm experiencing an issue that I can't seem to find any resolution too.

My dev environment:

$ pip freeze | grep Django                                                                                  
Django==1.11.6

$ python --version                                                                                        
Python 3.6.3

$ mysql --version                                                                                         
mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.21, for Linux (x86_64) using  EditLine wrapper

$ uname -r                                                                                                   
4.13.0-32-generic

OS: Ubuntu 17.10 x86_64

I'm working with a model that has a DateField() defined

class MyModel(models.Model):
    start_date = models.DateField()
    end_date = models.DateField()
 
    def to_json(self, option=None, section=None):
        val = {
            'start_date': self.start_date.strftime(settings.ISO_DATE) if self.start_date else None,
            'end_date': self.end_date.strftime(settings.ISO_DATE) if self.end_date elses None
        }
        
        return val

When I retrieve and access that object through a shell instance I am able to call mymodelobj.start_date and it will return a date object

In [5]: mymodelobj = MyModel.objects.get(id=379)
In [6]: mymodelobj.start_date
Out[6]: datetime.date(2018, 1, 29)
In [7]: type(mymodelobj.start_date)
Out[7]: datetime.date
In [8]:

But when the run through the application normally and when accessing the same object through self (self.start_date) the object is returning a string instead of a date object:

ipdb>
> /home/gary/dev/backend/v4/models.py(3499)to_json()
   3498             'cluster': None if self.cluster is None or self.cluster == 0 else self.cluster.to_json(),
-> 3499             'start_date': self.start_date.strftime(settings.ISO_DATE) if self.start_date else None,
   3500             'end_date': self.end_date.strftime(settings.ISO_DATE) if self.end_date else None,

ipdb> self.start_date
'2018-01-29'
ipdb> type(self.start_date)
<class 'str'>

Which then results in the following error being thrown.

  File "/home/gary/dev/backend/v4/models.py", line 3498, in to_json
    'start_date': self.start_date.strftime(settings.ISO_DATE) if self.start_date else None,
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'strftime'

Anyone have any idea as to what's going on?

[Tim Graham]

Please see TicketClosingReasons/UseSupportChannels for places to get help debugging your code. If you confirm a bug in Django, please reopen the ticket with steps to reproduce.