Disable click event until animation completes

Question

In my game I have a grid populated with words. To spell the words the user has to click on the letters on the side called "drag". When a letter is clicked it animates into position on the grid.

The problem I am having is that the user can click letters rapidly, which crashes the program. To solve this I want to disable the click events until the animation completes.

In the past I have used a setTimeOut function before but it is not a reliable method as the timing all depends on browser speeds.

Here is the click event:

$('.drag').on('click', function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    var target = $('.highlight-problem .drop-box:not(.occupied):first');
    var targetPos = target.parents('td').position();
    console.log(targetPos);
    var currentPos = $(this).offset();
    var b = $(this);
    if (target.length) {
        target.addClass("occupied");
        $(".occupied").parent(".flip-wrapper").addClass("flipped");
        var clonedObject = b.clone()
        if (b.data("letter") == target.parents('td').data("letter")) {
            clonedObject.addClass("right-letter");
            target.addClass('right-letter');
            setTimeout(function () {
                hitSound.play();
            }, 550);
        } else {
            clonedObject.addClass("wrong-letter");
            target.addClass('wrong-letter');
            setTimeout(function () {
                missSound.play();
            }, 550);
        }
        clonedObject.appendTo("table").css({
            position: "absolute",
            top: currentPos.top,
            left: currentPos.left
        }).stop().animate({
            top: targetPos.top,
            left: targetPos.left
        }, "slow", function () {
            $(this).prop('disabled', false).css({
                top: 0,
                left: 0
            }).appendTo(target);
            var spellWord = $('.highlight-problem .drop-box');
            if (!spellWord.filter(':not(.occupied)').length) {
                var wordIsCorrect = 0;
                spellWord.each(function () {
                    if ($(this).parents('td').data("letter") == $(this).find("div").data("letter")) {
                        console.log('letter is: ' + $(this).find("div").data("letter"))
                        wordIsCorrect++;
                    }
                });

Answer 1

You can do it in simple 3 steps.

1. Declare a global variable called animationComplete and set it to false.

   var animationComplete = false;
   

2. In your .animate({...}); function, toggle the value after the animation is complete.

   .animate({
       top: targetPos.top,
       left: targetPos.left
   }, "slow", function () {
       ...
       animationComplete = true;
   });
   

3. Check for the completeness using the global variable.

   if (animationComplete)
   {
       // Do something!
   }
   

Full Code

JavaScript

animationComplete = true;
$(document).ready(function(){
    animationComplete = false;
    $(".background").animate({
        height: 50,
        width: 50
    }, 10000, function(){
        animationComplete = true;
    });
    $("button").click(function(){
        if (animationComplete)
            $(".background").animate({
                height: 200,
                width: 200
            }, 10000, function(){
                animationComplete = false;
            });
        else
            alert("Please wait till the animation is complete!");
    });
});

HTML

<div class="background"></div>
<button>Click me!</button>​

CSS

.background {background: red;}

Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/KAryP/

Fiddle for your code here: http://jsfiddle.net/smilburn/Dxxmh/94/

Answer 2

Can't test code atm, but checking if the element is not animated within click function should do

if(!$('selector:animated')){


}