Deserialize Java 8 LocalDateTime with JacksonMapper

The date time you're passing is not an ISO local date time format.

Change to

@Column(name = "start_date")
@DateTimeFormat(iso = DateTimeFormatter.ISO_LOCAL_DATE_TIME)
@JsonFormat(pattern = "YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm")
private LocalDateTime startDate;

and pass the date string in the format '2011-12-03T10:15:30'.

But if you still want to pass your custom format, you just have to specify the right formatter.

Change to

@Column(name = "start_date")
@DateTimeFormat(iso = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"))
@JsonFormat(pattern = "YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm")
private LocalDateTime startDate;

I think your problem is the @DateTimeFormat has no effect at all. As the Jackson is doing the deserialization and it doesn't know anything about spring annotation, and I don't see spring scanning this annotation in the deserialization context.

Alternatively, you can try setting the formatter while registering the Java time module.

LocalDateTimeDeserializer localDateTimeDeserializer = new LocalDateTimeDeserializer(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"));
module.addDeserializer(LocalDateTime.class, localDateTimeDeserializer);

Here is the test case with the deseralizer which works fine. Maybe try to get rid of that DateTimeFormat annotation altogether.

@RunWith(JUnit4.class)
public class JacksonLocalDateTimeTest {

    private ObjectMapper objectMapper;

    @Before
    public void init() {
        JavaTimeModule module = new JavaTimeModule();
        LocalDateTimeDeserializer localDateTimeDeserializer =  new LocalDateTimeDeserializer(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"));
        module.addDeserializer(LocalDateTime.class, localDateTimeDeserializer);
        objectMapper = Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder.json()
                .modules(module)
                .featuresToDisable(SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS)
                .build();
    }

    @Test
    public void test() throws IOException {
        final String json = "{ \"date\": \"2016-11-08 12:00\" }";
        final JsonType instance = objectMapper.readValue(json, JsonType.class);

        assertEquals(LocalDateTime.parse("2016-11-08 12:00",DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm") ), instance.getDate());
    }
}


class JsonType {
    private LocalDateTime date;

    public LocalDateTime getDate() {
        return date;
    }

    public void setDate(LocalDateTime date) {
        this.date = date;
    }
}

You used wrong letter case for year in line:

@JsonFormat(pattern = "YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm")

Should be:

@JsonFormat(pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm")

With this change everything is working as expected.