Want time delay before function call in apex code

Question

I want time delay before function call in apex code. I already created one delay method but it is not working as per expectation. So, is there any way to get this working.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Probably a better way to do this would be to break up your Apex code such that the part you want to execute later is in a separate method. You can then call this method from another method that has an @future annotation, or use the Apex Scheduler to schedule that code for a future time. Either of these methods will cause the code to be executed asynchronously after your original method has completed (the @future method is easier to implement but the scheduler method has the advantage of running at a predictable time).

Answer 2

If you need something like the sleep() function, one way to do it is to make a call to a http service which will sleep a requested amount of time. This is fairly simple to do, and there are existing publicly available services for it, for example the one at http://1.cuzillion.com/bin/resource.cgi.

First you have to Configure a new Remote Site in SalesForce (Security Controls -> Remote Site Settings), name it however you want but make sure the Remote Site URL matches the above URL, and that the "Active" checkbox is checked.

After that, you can define your method in code like so:

public static void sleep(Integer sleepSeconds) {
    Long startTS = System.currentTimeMillis();
    HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
    req.setEndpoint('http://1.cuzillion.com/bin/resource.cgi?sleep=' + sleepSeconds);
    req.setMethod('GET');
    Http http = new Http();
    HTTPResponse res = http.send(req);
    Long duration = System.currentTimeMillis() - startTS;
    System.debug('Duration: ' + duration + 'ms');
}

Running it yields:

sleep(1);
-> 08:46:57.242 (1242588000)|USER_DEBUG|[10]|DEBUG|Duration: 1202ms