Help Chosing Between Settimeout And Setinterval

UPDATE 2: OK, looks like it runs the first time after a minute. How do I get it to run onload, then every minute after that? UPDATE 1: I've tried: var interval = setInterval(get_r

Solution 1:

It's totally personal preference. setInterval has some odd edge cases around what happens when the previous interval's code hasn't finished running before the next interval is due to start (not a problem if your interval is every minute; intervals every second, which one sometimes wants, get a bit tricky).

I tend to prefer chained setTimeout calls (where each schedules the next) because they can't run away with you — your code always has to explicitly say "Okay, and call me back again next time." But properly-written code should work with either.

Chained setTimeout calls are also more well-suited to asynchronous operations, like for instance polling something via ajax, because you don't schedule the next timeout until the ajax operation completes. Using setInterval, because the ajax calls are asynchronous, you could end up overlapping them.

Solution 2:

Using setinterval would be the more natural choise. If you use setTimeout, you have to start a new timeout from the event handler.

window.setInterval(get_reported_incidents, 60*1000);

Solution 3:

setTimeout runs a command once after a period of time. setInterval runs a command every time interval.

So, to run get_reported_incidents every minute use setInterval.

var interval = setInterval(get_reported_incidents, 60000);

Solution 4:

setinterval executes a function at a given interval. settimeout executes a function after a specified wait time, and then exits.

If you are attempting to do a cron-like execution every minute, you will want to use setinterval.

Please see http://javascript.about.com/library/blstvsi.htm for a comparison.

Solution 5:

use setTimeout recursively. See here for more information on why setInterval is a poor choice.

function timeout (){
    get_reported_incidents();
    setTimeout(timeout, 1000 * 60);
}

timeout(); // start