Why Does Parsing a Date String in Java Throw 'Illegal pattern character 'T''?

Illegal Pattern Character 'T' When Parsing Date String to java.util.Date

Parsing a date string to a java.util.Date object requires a pattern that adheres to specific rules. One common pattern is "yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ssZ," which represents dates in ISO 8601 format.

Problem:
When using the specified pattern, an exception is thrown with the message "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal pattern character 'T'."

Reason:
The 'T' in the pattern represents a separator between the date and time components. However, in Java's SimpleDateFormat, the 'T' character needs to be escaped with single quotes on either side to be recognized correctly.

Solution 1: Escape 'T' in Pattern
To resolve the issue using the original pattern, escape the 'T' character as follows:

String pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'hh:mm:ssZ";

Solution 2: Use ISO_8601_24H_FULL_FORMAT
Alternatively, you can use the pre-defined ISO_8601_24H_FULL_FORMAT constant provided by the Q2597083 class:

String pattern = Q2597083.ISO_8601_24H_FULL_FORMAT;

For Java 8 and Higher:
For Java 8 and above, it is recommended to use the DateTimeFormatter class instead of SimpleDateFormat and Instant instead of Date. Here's an example:

import java.time.Instant;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;

String dateString = "2010-10-02T12:23:23Z";
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME;
Instant d = Instant.parse(dateString);
System.out.println(d.getYear());

By using these solutions, you can successfully parse date strings in ISO 8601 format without encountering the "Illegal pattern character 'T'" exception.

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