problem with dates

[piero de salvia]

hello,

I am trying to test against the start and stop date of a time builder,
which is of type mmevent.

I saw that start and stop are saved as integers.

So i do :

// get today's date in milliseconds

Long  now = new Long(new Date().getTime());

and then I check the value of my time builder like this :

<mm:relatednodes type="mmevents">
    <mm:field name="stop" id="aStop" write="false" />
    <mm:write referid="aStop" jspvar="runningStop" vartype="Long" >
    <%
     if ( now.compareTo(runningStop) <= 0 )
      endOK = true;
    %>
    </mm:write>
</mm:relatednodes>

but even if "stop" is set in the future, this never works, because the
value that i get back from mmbase for "stop" is always smaller than
today's value.

how does mmbase store dates in this case?

thank you

piero de salvia