Oliver Drotbohm opened SPR-11693 and commented

On Spring 3.2.8 a default ConversionService instance (e.g. DefaultFormattingConversionService will answer the following call with true:

conversionService.canConvert(Object.class, String.class);

As of Spring 4.0.1 the same call returns false which is due to that change (introduced for #15884). From the commit however, it's not quite clear why the implementation of ObjectToObjectConverter now explicitly excludes String.valueOf(…).

Affects: 4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.0.3

Issue Links:

• Add Converter implementations that convert legacy Date instances into JDK 8 date/time types [SPR-11259] #15884 Add Converter implementations that convert legacy Date instances into JDK 8 date/time types