Make dateutil compulsory in article.py

This ensures correct dates in published articles

Author: khinsen

README.md

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ using the `--sandbox` switch.
 #### 1. Pre-Publication (article DOI, URL and number)
 
 Run the [process.py](process.py) script using the provided metadata
-file. It requires Python 3 plus the [PyYAML](https://pyyaml.org/) and [Requests](https://requests.kennethreitz.org/) libraries.
+file. It requires Python 3 plus the libraries [PyYAML](https://pyyaml.org/), [Requests](https://requests.kennethreitz.org/), and [dateutil](https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/).
 
 First run on the sandbox server to check everything is OK:
 

article.py

@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 # Released under the BSD two-clauses licence
 
 import yaml
+import dateutil.parser
 
 class Contributor:
     def __init__(self, role, name, orcid="", email="", affiliations=[]):
@@ -74,23 +75,12 @@ def __init__(self, url, doi):
 
 class Date:
     def __init__(self, date):
-        try:
-            import dateutil.parser
-
-            date = dateutil.parser.parse(date)
-            self.date = date
-            self.year = date.year
-            self.month = date.month
-            self.day = date.day
-            self.textual = self.date.strftime("%d %B %Y")
-        except:
-            import datetime
-            now = datetime.datetime.now()
-            self.date = now
-            self.year = now.year
-            self.month = now.month
-            self.day = now.day
-            self.textual = ""
+        date = dateutil.parser.parse(date)
+        self.date = date
+        self.year = date.year
+        self.month = date.month
+        self.day = date.day
+        self.textual = self.date.strftime("%d %B %Y")
 
     def __str__(self):
         return self.textual