Illegal pattern character ‘T’ when parsing a date string to java.util.Date

Update for Java 8 and higher

You can now simply do Instant.parse("2015-04-28T14:23:38.521Z") and get the correct thing now, especially since you should be using Instant instead of the broken java.util.Date with the most recent versions of Java.

You should be using DateTimeFormatter instead of SimpleDateFormatter as well.

Original Answer:

The explanation below is still valid as as what the format represents.
But it was written before Java 8 was ubiquitous so it uses the old
classes that you should not be using if you are using Java 8 or
higher.

This works with the input with the trailing Z as demonstrated:

In the pattern the T is escaped with ' on either side.

The pattern for the Z at the end is actually XXX as documented
in the JavaDoc for SimpleDateFormat, it is just not very clear
on actually how to use it since Z is the marker for the old
TimeZone information as well.

Q2597083.java

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;
import java.util.TimeZone;

public class Q2597083
{
    /**
     * All Dates are normalized to UTC, it is up the client code to convert to the appropriate TimeZone.
     */
    public static final TimeZone UTC;

    /**
     * @see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Combined_date_and_time_representations">Combined Date and Time Representations</a>
     */
    public static final String ISO_8601_24H_FULL_FORMAT = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX";

    /**
     * 0001-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
     */
    public static final Date BEGINNING_OF_TIME;

    /**
     * 292278994-08-17T07:12:55.807Z
     */
    public static final Date END_OF_TIME;

    static
    {
        UTC = TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC");
        TimeZone.setDefault(UTC);
        final Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar(UTC);
        c.set(1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0);
        c.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
        BEGINNING_OF_TIME = c.getTime();
        c.setTime(new Date(Long.MAX_VALUE));
        END_OF_TIME = c.getTime();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
    {

        final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(ISO_8601_24H_FULL_FORMAT);
        sdf.setTimeZone(UTC);
        System.out.println("sdf.format(BEGINNING_OF_TIME) = " + sdf.format(BEGINNING_OF_TIME));
        System.out.println("sdf.format(END_OF_TIME) = " + sdf.format(END_OF_TIME));
        System.out.println("sdf.format(new Date()) = " + sdf.format(new Date()));
        System.out.println("sdf.parse(\"2015-04-28T14:23:38.521Z\") = " + sdf.parse("2015-04-28T14:23:38.521Z"));
        System.out.println("sdf.parse(\"0001-01-01T00:00:00.000Z\") = " + sdf.parse("0001-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"));
        System.out.println("sdf.parse(\"292278994-08-17T07:12:55.807Z\") = " + sdf.parse("292278994-08-17T07:12:55.807Z"));
    }
}

Produces the following output:

sdf.format(BEGINNING_OF_TIME) = 0001-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
sdf.format(END_OF_TIME) = 292278994-08-17T07:12:55.807Z
sdf.format(new Date()) = 2015-04-28T14:38:25.956Z
sdf.parse("2015-04-28T14:23:38.521Z") = Tue Apr 28 14:23:38 UTC 2015
sdf.parse("0001-01-01T00:00:00.000Z") = Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 1
sdf.parse("292278994-08-17T07:12:55.807Z") = Sun Aug 17 07:12:55 UTC 292278994