The publish_date member should be a datetime object

[dlrobertson]

The article.publish_date member should be a datetime object. There are several libraries that parse out dates from strings. I've used python-dateutil in the past.

[barrust]

I personally dislike breaking current code; would adding a new property that is converted to a python datetime be appropriate? I too have used python-dateutil and think that would be a good option here.