HTML5 - delay canvas drawing

Question

I have a simple chunk of code to draw a line in a page. My problem is that I don't know much about HTML5 or JS and I need help to set a delay on the drawing of this line. I want to be able to choose if I want to see it drawing instantly when opening the page or define it to have 5 seconds delay before being draw.

Here it is:

<canvas id="myCanvas" width="1250" height="120"></canvas>

<script>

var canvas = $("#myCanvas")[0];
var c = canvas.getContext("2d");
var amount = 0;
var startX = 164;
var startY = 120;
var endX = 1094;
var endY = 120;

setInterval(function() {
    amount += 0.01; // change to alter duration
    if (amount > 1) amount = 1;
    c.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
    c.strokeStyle = "black";
    c.lineWidth=1;
    c.strokeStyle="#707070";
    c.moveTo(startX, startY);
    // lerp : a  + (b - a) * f
    c.lineTo(startX + (endX - startX) * amount, startY + (endY - startY) * amount);
    c.stroke();
}, 0);

</script>

Thank you for the help!

Answer 1

Wrap it in a setTimeout:

var canvas = $("#myCanvas")[0];
var c = canvas.getContext("2d");
var amount = 0;
var startX = 164;
var startY = 120;
var endX = 1094;
var endY = 120;

setTimeout(function() {
    var interval = setInterval(function() {
        amount += 0.01; // change to alter duration
        if (amount > 1) {
            amount = 1;
            clearInterval(interval);
        }
        c.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
        c.strokeStyle = "black";
        c.lineWidth=1;
        c.strokeStyle="#707070";
        c.moveTo(startX, startY);
        // lerp : a  + (b - a) * f
        c.lineTo(startX + (endX - startX) * amount, startY + (endY - startY) * amount);
        c.stroke();
    }, 0);

}, 3000);

The above waits 3 seconds (3000 milliseconds) before starting the drawing. Also, whenever you start an interval with setInterval you should store the return value so you can stop the interval later. The code above stops the interval when it's done drawing with clearInterval().