This was an unfinished feature from iteration 3, where the client stores PantryItem purchase_date with a TS Date object, however, the server (and therefore the database), still uses Strings to store the purchase_date field. Thankfully, since the server is being given TS dates, all of the date strings are consistently in YYYY-MM-DD format, however, we should avoid type casting between the client and the server.
This was an unfinished feature from iteration 3, where the client stores PantryItem purchase_date with a TS Date object, however, the server (and therefore the database), still uses Strings to store the purchase_date field. Thankfully, since the server is being given TS dates, all of the date strings are consistently in YYYY-MM-DD format, however, we should avoid type casting between the client and the server.