Deserialization error when date or datetime value is empty

[anilmamede]

If local date or datetime is empty on json property, the structure cannot be deserialized. The issue lies on parsing local date or datetime as the following code demonstrate

        final DateTimeFormatter fmt = DateTimeFormat.forPattern(PATTERN);
        fmt.parseLocalDate(null); // throws NPE
        fmt.parseLocalDate(""); // throws java.lang.IllegalArgumentException

[Greg]

This is included in the 1.2.0 release.