this is a modification of the function provided
by 'phiver' on
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32076957/nas-introduced-when
-transforming-json-date
Usage
.getType(x)
Value
the parsed result: either Date, String or numeric
Arguments
x
a list that is expected to have an item 'Type'
Details
extracts and converts a JSON string (including with Timezone)
from the item 'Type'
in the list x. the item is parsed from JSON into either a numeric,
string, or a R Date object