js/jquery: scheduling events

Question

I want to schedule events, that will fire and call my predefined callback

How can schedule in js / jquery:

1. one time event?
2. recurring event (to call my function every minute, or five minutes)?

Answer 1

You want setTimeout for a one time event and setInterval for a repeating event.

Both take two arguments: a function and an interval of time specified in milliseconds.

var delay_millis = 1500;

//will alert once, at least half a second after the call to setTimeout
var onceHandle = window.setTimeout(function() {
  alert("Time has passed!");
}, delay_millis);

//will alert again and again
var repeatHandle = window.setInterval(function() {
  alert("Am I annoying you yet?");
}, delay_millis);

Bonus: if you keep around the values returned by calling these functions, you can cancel the callback if you need to.

var shutUpShutUp = function() {
  window.clearInterval(repeatHandle);
};

shutUpShutUp(); //now I can hear myself think.

Answer 2

jQuery has nothing to do with it. You need JavaScript timers: setTimeout() and setInterval()