jQuery: Wait/Delay 1 second without executing code

Question

You can also just delay some operation this way:

setTimeout(function (){
  
  // Something you want delayed.
            
}, 5000); // How long you want the delay to be, measured in milliseconds.

$.delay is used to delay animations in a queue, not halt execution.

Instead of using a while loop, you need to recursively call a method that performs the check every second using setTimeout:

var check = function(){
    if(condition){
        // run when condition is met
    }
    else {
        setTimeout(check, 1000); // check again in a second
    }
}

check();

ES6 setTimeout

setTimeout(() => {
  console.log("we waited 204586560000 ms to run this code, oh boy wowwoowee!");
}, 204586560000);

Edit: 204586560000 ms is the approximate time between the original question and this answer... assuming I calculated correctly.

If you are using ES6 features and you're in an async function, you can effectively halt the code execution for a certain time with this function:

const delay = millis => new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
  setTimeout(_ => resolve(), millis)
});

This is how you use it:

await delay(5000);

It will stall for the requested amount of milliseconds, but only if you're in an async function. Example below:

const myFunction = async function() {
  // first code block ...

  await delay(5000);

  // some more code, executed 5 seconds after the first code block finishes
}

jQuery's delay function is meant to be used with effects and effect queues, see the delay docs and the example therein:

$('#foo').slideUp(300).delay(800).fadeIn(400);

If you want to observe a variable for changes, you could do something like

(function() {
    var observerInterval = setInterval(function() {
        if (/* check for changes here */) {
           clearInterval(observerInterval);
           // do something here
        }
    }, 1000);
})();

JavaScript setTimeout is a very good solution:

function funcx()
   {
   // your code here
   // break out here if needed
   setTimeout(funcx, 3000);
   }

funcx();

The delay function in jQuery is mostly used for delaying animations in a jQuery animation queue.

delay() doesn't halt the flow of code then re-run it. There's no practical way to do that in JavaScript. Everything has to be done with functions which take callbacks such as setTimeout which others have mentioned.

The purpose of jQuery's delay() is to make an animation queue wait before executing. So for example $(element).delay(3000).fadeIn(250); will make the element fade in after 3 seconds.