This point about using seconds is entirely correct, and date-time should always be in epoch timestamp (numeric) except for human interfaces (input or rendering for output). APIs and web-forms should never pass multipart date strings because they can be internally inconsistent, for example February 30. (edit: unless there's no sequential meaning in the date and the date is just a local day name without the notion that adding or subtracting 1 takes you to yesterday or tomorrow (https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...)).

(p.s. autarch thanks for your efforts in open source).