Unable to obtain LocalDateTime from TemporalAccessor when parsing LocalDateTime (Java 8)

It turns out Java does not accept a bare Date value as DateTime. Using LocalDate instead of LocalDateTime solves the issue:

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyyMMdd");
LocalDate dt = LocalDate.parse("20140218", formatter);

If you really need to transform a date to a LocalDateTime object, you could use the LocalDate.atStartOfDay(). This will give you a LocalDateTime object at the specified date, having the hour, minute and second fields set to 0:

final DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyyMMdd");
LocalDateTime time = LocalDate.parse("20140218", formatter).atStartOfDay();

For what is worth if anyone should read again this topic(like me) the correct answer would be in DateTimeFormatter definition, e.g.:

private static DateTimeFormatter DATE_FORMAT =  
            new DateTimeFormatterBuilder().appendPattern("dd/MM/yyyy[ [HH][:mm][:ss][.SSS]]")
            .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0)
            .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.MINUTE_OF_HOUR, 0)
            .parseDefaulting(ChronoField.SECOND_OF_MINUTE, 0)
            .toFormatter(); 

One should set the optional fields if they will appear. And the rest of code should be exactly the same.