Comparing datetimes in php - php

Question

I am comparing a date with a datetime and I get the result I expect however I also am wondering if there is a better way to display my output and I have a query on my current output also.
Here is a snippet of my current code:
<?php
$todayDate = date('Y-m-d');
$seconds = strtotime($todayDate) - strtotime($dueDate);
$hours = $seconds / 60 / 60;
echo number_format($hours, 2);
?>
in my case $dueDate in my database here is 2017-06-26 09:11:28 so the output is displaying as -57.19. My question, is there is a clean way to strip the - and also add h after the hours and m after the minutes so the output looks like this?
57h 19m
UPDATE
So After tinkering around I have managed to do this:
substr($dateFormat,0,3).'h '.substr($dateFormat,4).'m';
The output now is -57h 19m
I still have this negative character, im not sure if that is actually correct I cannot seem to work it out because the date in my database is a day ahead but it shows a negative value...

Answer 1

Using the DateTime class makes it very simple
$dueDate = '2017-06-26 09:11:28';
$due = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $dueDate);
$today = new DateTime();
$diff = $today->diff($due);
echo $diff->format('%hh %im');
Result:
11h 37m
But as you asked about timezones, here is how to add those in as well. And also as you orignial date was in fact some days distant I added a more accurate difference output
$dueDate = '2017-06-25 00:00:00';
$due = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $dueDate, new DateTimeZone('Europe/London'));
$today = new DateTime('now', new DateTimeZone('Europe/London'));
$diff = $today->diff($due);
echo $diff->format('%R %hh %im').PHP_EOL;
if ( $diff->invert ) {
echo $diff->format('Overdue by %dd %hh %im');
} else {
echo $diff->format('You have %dd %hh %im till overdue');
}
Results
+ 1h 6m
You have 0d 1h 6m till overdue

Answer 2

You need to keep date integer
$time = time();
after
you can use this every where and evert way
For example
$date1 = time();
$date2 = time();
$comparingdate = $date2 - $date1;
$myFormat = date("T-m-d h:i:s",$comparingdate); // Show how you want

Answer 3

use floor and round functions to get the minutes and hours after convert the date to positive sign using abs function
<?php
$todayDate = date('Y-m-d');
$dueDate = "2017-06-26 09:11:28";
$seconds =abs(strtotime($todayDate) - strtotime($dueDate));
$hours =floor($seconds / 60 / 60);
$minutes= round($seconds / 60 / 60 - $hours,2)*100;
echo "<br>";
echo $hours. " H :";
echo $minutes. " M ";
?>