Java how to parse this timestamp "20200926T221447Z"

Things I've tried

  public class Event {
private SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMddTHHmmssZ");
private Date date;
private String summary;
public Date getDate() {
return date;
}
public void setDate(Date date) {
this.date = date;
}
public void setDate(String stringDate) throws ParseException {
this.date = formatter.parse(stringDate);
}
public String getSummary() {
return summary;
}
public void setSummary(String summary) {
this.summary = summary;
}
}

// main

String x = "20200926T221447Z"
Event event = new Event();
event.setDate(x);

Exception I get

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal pattern character 'T'
at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.compile(SimpleDateFormat.java:826)
at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.initialize(SimpleDateFormat.java:634)
at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.<init>(SimpleDateFormat.java:605)
at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.<init>(SimpleDateFormat.java:580)
at stuff.calendar.Event.<init>(Event.java:9)
at stuff.calendar.App.main(App.java:34)

Question : Is my SimpleDateFormat incorrect? I've tried changing this around but none work. Is there another java API I should use to parse this particular time format?

When attempting to parse a String into a date-time object, I tend to prefer using a DateTimeFormatter over SimpleDateFormat.

I was able to parse your String into a ZonedDateTime object with the following snippet:

String x = "20200926T221447Z";
DateTimeFormatter dtf = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("uuuuMMdd'T'HHmmssX");
System.out.println(ZonedDateTime.parse(x, dtf));

Output:

2020-09-26T22:14:47Z

You have to put quotes around the string literals that should not be interpreted:

formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd'T'HHmmss'Z'");

Also consider that Z has a special parsing meaning (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html). So if you actually want to include a timezone, you need to specify it in the input in RFC-822 format.

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd'T'HHmmssZ");                                      
Date d = formatter.parse("20200926T221447-0800");
System.out.println(d);    

Use X instead if your timezone is ISO8601 like your example:

Example (which I think is what you want):

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd'T'HHmmssX");
Date d = formatter.parse("20200926T221447Z");                                                                 
System.out.println(d);