Ealing: "unconverted data remains: ,24/03/2026"

[wjt]

Name of Council

Ealing

Issue Information

I am currently seeing the following:

Failed setup, will retry: Unexpected error: unconverted data remains: ,24/03/2026

The JSON response from the council looks like this (formatted with jq):

{
  "param1": "TU1",
  "param2": [
    {
      "Service": "BLACK RUBBISH WHEELIE BIN",
      "collectionDate": [
        "24/03/2026"
      ],
      "collectionDateString": "24/03/2026",
      "collectionSchedule": "REF14 TueFort2"
    },
    {
      "Service": "GARDEN WASTE BIN (SUBSCRIPTION ONLY)",
      "collectionDate": [
        "24/03/2026",
        "24/03/2026"
      ],
      "collectionDateString": "24/03/2026,24/03/2026",
      "collectionSchedule": "GW1 GWTueFort2"
    },
    {
      "Service": "BLUE RECYCLING WHEELIE BIN",
      "collectionDate": [
        "17/03/2026"
      ],
      "collectionDateString": "17/03/2026",
      "collectionSchedule": "REC14 TueFort1"
    },
    {
      "Service": "FOOD BOX",
      "collectionDate": [
        "17/03/2026"
      ],
      "collectionDateString": "17/03/2026",
      "collectionSchedule": "FOOD4 Tue"
    }
  ],
  "param3": false,
  "param4": "TU2"
}

The issue is that the collectionDateString for GARDEN WASTE BIN (SUBSCRIPTION ONLY) has two dates, space-separated. (Two of the same date. Weird.) The code in both Ealing implementations (c.f. #1884) assumes collectionDateString is a single date:

datetime.strptime(
    NextCollectionDate, "%d/%m/%Y"
).strftime(date_format)

The council website JS splits this value on ,:

var str_array = data.param2[i].collectionDateString.split(',');

I don't know why it doesn't use the perfectly good collectionDate array.

Verification

• I searched for similar issues at https://github.com/robbrad/UKBinCollectionData/issues?q=is:issue and found no duplicates
• I have checked my address/postcode/UPRN works on the council's website
• I have provided a detailed explanation of the issue as well as steps to replicate the issue
• I understand that this project is run by volunteer contributors therefore completion of this issue cannot be guaranteed