What is the equivalent of getTime(), which is a method in Date, in joda.time.LocalDate?

I was doing a simple calculation to get the difference between two dates. If I was using a Date class I can do like this:

Date d1 = new GregorianCalendar(2000, 11, 31, 23, 59).getTime();

    /** Today's date */
    Date today = new Date();

    // Get msec from each, and subtract.
    long diff = today.getTime() - d1.getTime();

    System.out.println("The 21st century (up to " + today + ") is "
        + (diff / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24)) + " days old.");
  }

But I couldn't find a method like getTime() in Local date. Is there any way so I can easily get what I am trying to achieve?

I even tried to change my LocalDate object to a temporary date object like this:

 LocalDate date=new LocalDate();
    Date d=date.toDate();

but the method toDate() isnt working . i.e it says it is not recognized method.(so compile time error) but from what I can see it is in the Documentation

Thank you for your time and of course happy Thanksgiving.

Days.daysBetween() is the answer.

LocalDate now = new LocalDate();
LocalDate past = now.minusDays(300);
int days = Days.daysBetween(past,now).getDays();

Never convert a LocalDate to a Java Date (two completey different beasts) if you are just dealing with dates. A Jodatime Localdate is a true "Calendar date", i.e. , a tuple of {day,month,year} (together with a Gregorian calendar specification), and has nothing to do with "physical time", with seconds, hours, etc. If you need to do dates arithmetic, stick with Localdate and you'll never need to worry about stupid bugs (timezones, DST, etc) which could arise if you dates arithmetic using java Dates.