Parsing a year String to a LocalDate with Java8

    String yearStr = "2008";
    Year year = Year.parse(yearStr);
    System.out.println(year);

Output:

2008

If what you need is a way to represent a year, then LocalDate is not the correct class for your purpose. java.time includes a Year class exactly for you. Note that we don’t even need an explicit formatter since obviously your year string is in the default format for a year. And if at a later point you want to convert, that’s easy too. To convert into the first day of the year, like Joda-Time would have given you:

    LocalDate date = year.atDay(1);
    System.out.println(date);

2008-01-01

In case you find the following more readable, use that instead:

    LocalDate date = year.atMonth(Month.JANUARY).atDay(1);

The result is the same.

If you do need a LocalDate from the outset, greg449’s answer is correct and the one that you should use.

LocalDate parsing requires that all of the year, month and day are specfied.

You can specify default values for the month and day by using a DateTimeFormatterBuilder and using the parseDefaulting methods:

DateTimeFormatter format = new DateTimeFormatterBuilder()
     .appendPattern("yyyy")
     .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.MONTH_OF_YEAR, 1)
     .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1)
     .toFormatter();

LocalDate.parse("2008", format);