How can I convert Json data that coming from Postman convert into Integers in python?

Question

Here I've wrote a python script using MQL5 to get total history order from MetaTrader5. here's the code,

from_date = datetime(2020, 1, 1)
to_date = datetime.now()
history_orders = mt.history_orders_total(from_date, to_date )
print(history_orders)

what my requirement is I need to get from_date and to_date parameter from user. so I passed these parameter from Postman Using POST request.here is the payload

{
     "fromDate" : "2020, 1, 1",
     "toDate": "2020, 11, 8"
}

And it says,

history_orders = mt.history_orders_total(datetime(fromDate), datetime(toDate)) TypeError: an integer is required (got type str)

how can I convert these Json payloads into integers in python? here my code.

@app.route("/", methods=['POST', 'GET'])
def historyOrderTotal():
    fromDate = None
    toDate = None
    if request.method == 'POST':
        fromDate = request.json['fromDate']
        toDate = request.json['toDate']

    mt.initialize()

    history_orders = mt.history_orders_total(datetime(fromDate), datetime(toDate))
    print(history_orders)

Answer 1

You care less about the integers, you want datetime objects. You have decided that you want <year>, <month>, <day> as your incoming serialised JSON format for dates.

So you might do:

from datetime import datetime

pattern = "%Y, %m, %d"
from_date = datetime.strptime(fromDate, pattern)
to_date = datetime.strptime(toDate, pattern)

You might want to add validations, e.g. assert from_date <= to_date etc. depending on your use case.

I also recommend you look into ISO 8601 date formats, as a more standardised way of serialising dates.

Debug Notes, try this based on your comments:

@app.route("/", methods=['POST', 'GET'])
def historyOrderTotal():
    fromDate = None
    toDate = None
    if request.method == 'POST':
        fromDate = request.json['fromDate']
        toDate = request.json['toDate']
        print("json-from:", fromDate)
        print("json-to:", toDate)
        pattern = "%Y, %m, %d"
        from_date = datetime.strptime(fromDate, pattern)
        to_date = datetime.strptime(toDate, pattern)
        print("parsed-from:", from_date)
        print("parsed-to:", to_date)
        if mt.initialize():
            history_orders = mt.history_orders_total(from_date, to_date)
            print("history-orders", history_orders)
        else:
            print("initialize() failed, error code =", mt.last_error())
    else:
        print(">> Not a POST request")