Javascript - telling setInterval to only fire x amount of times?

Question

Is it possible to limit the amount of times that setInterval will fire in javascript?

Answer 1

You can call clearInterval() after x calls:

var x = 0; var intervalID = setInterval(function () {     // Your logic here     if (++x === 5) {        window.clearInterval(intervalID);    } }, 1000); 

To avoid global variables, an improvement of the above would be:

function setIntervalX(callback, delay, repetitions) {     var x = 0;     var intervalID = window.setInterval(function () {         callback();         if (++x === repetitions) {            window.clearInterval(intervalID);        }     }, delay); } 

Then you can call the new setInvervalX() function as follows:

// This will be repeated 5 times with 1 second intervals: setIntervalX(function () {     // Your logic here }, 1000, 5); 

Answer 2

I personally prefer to use setTimeout() spaced out to achieve the same effect

// Set a function to run every "interval" seconds a total of "x" times var x = 10; var interval = 1000;  for (var i = 0; i < x; i++) {     setTimeout(function () {         // Do Something     }, i * interval) } 

There's no clean up required with clearInterval()

You can enclose it to avoid variables leaking and it looks pretty clean :)

// Definition function setIntervalLimited(callback, interval, x) {      for (var i = 0; i < x; i++) {         setTimeout(callback, i * interval);     }  }  // Usage setIntervalLimited(function() {     console.log('hit');          // => hit...hit...etc (every second, stops after 10) }, 1000, 10)