Java ~ How to get the remaining minutes between two dates

I had to look this up, so I am posting this snippet in the hope that it helps someone else.

I monitor events in real time. The program has to know when the event ends, and send SMS messages. The event, including the expiry date/time is a database entry. How do you determine the remaining time in minutes?

First I fetch the expiry date/time into a bean. It is stored as a GregorianCalendar entity in the database, because I have to extensively manipulate it before the event starts. Then I get a time for NOW. Then I have to subtract the two. This is how I do it:

Date now = new Date();

GregorianCalendar expiryDate = myevent.getExpiryDate();

Date end = expiryDate.getTime();

long difference = Math.abs(end.getTime() - now.getTime());

long minutesLeft = difference / (1000 * 60);

Hope this helps.