Comparing dates (without the time part) in Java

In my current project, I have to deal a lot with dates, especially checking if the date entered by user is today, or max one year from today etc. As I find the datetime API of Java7 (which I regrettably still have to use) pretty confusing, in order to keep my code clean and readable, I wrote the following method:

public static int compareDates(Date date1, Date date2) {
    SimpleDateFormat math = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd"); // I'm working with servlets, so keeping it thread-safe
    Long date1asLong = new Long(math.format(date1));
    Long date2asLong = new Long(math.format(date2));
    return date1asLong.compareTo(date2asLong);
}

// usage, e.g. to find if the date entered by user is greater than today
if (MyDateUtils.compareDates(dateFromUser, new Date()) > 0) {
    // do the work
} else {
    // scream
}

Anyway, I am not sure whether this approach has any serious drawbacks, so I am throwing it here for review. Looking forward to your comments.

It's an interesting, simple approach.

But you don't need new Long objects. Better use primitive types instead.

In fact, as @njzk2 pointed out in a comment,
you don't need long at all, as dates in yyyyMMdd format are alphabetically sorted, you can use simple String comparison.

It's good you mention in comments that you create a SimpleDateFormat instance inside the method for thread safety.
Another common solution in such situations is to use a ThreadLocal.
You can wrap a SimpleDateFormat instance in a ThreadLocal so that all threads will have their own copy, eliminating thread safety issues.

Last but not least, "math" is a poor name for a date formatter object.

Putting my suggestions together:

private static final ThreadLocal dateFormatThreadLocal = new ThreadLocal() {
    @Override
    protected DateFormat initialValue() {
        return new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");
    }
};

public static int compareDates(Date date1, Date date2) {
    DateFormat dateFormat = dateFormatThreadLocal.get();
    return dateFormat.format(date1).compareTo(dateFormat.format(date2));
}

StackExchange Code Review Q#116108, answer score: 8