Let's assume that we have below code, which has timeout set for 5 seconds.
router.get('/timeout', async (req, res, next) => {
req.setTimeout(5000, () => {
res.status(503)
res.send()
})
while (true) {
console.log("I'm alive")
}
res.status(200)
res.send({msg: 'success'})
})
I know that the last two lines will never be reached, but that's not a point. The problem which I want to solve is that the while loop is still working despite response was sent.
Is there some way to kill such still working tasks?
There are two types of long running tasks and cancelling is different for both:
1) Asynchronous tasks:
They may take a while, however they are not using the JavaScript engine, instead the engine is in idle to wait for some external data (database / files / timers whatever). In some cases (timers for example) you can easily discard that external action, also you can trigger it as an event as the engine is not blocked and can handle the cancellation. If the async action cannot be cancelled directly (database read for example) you can wait until it is done and cancel it then:
class Cancelable {
constructor() {
this.cancelled = false;
this.handlers = [];
}
onCancel(handler) { this.handlers.push(handler); }
cancel() {
this.cancelled = true;
this.handlers.forEach(handler => handler());
}
}
// inside of the request handler:
const canceller = new Cancelable;
req.setTimeout(5000, () => {
res.status(503);
res.send();
canceller.cancel(); // propagate cancellation
});
// Some long running, async cancellable task
const timer = setTimeout(function() {
res.send("done");
}, 10000 * Math.random())
// on cancellation just remove the timer
canceller.onCancel(() => clearTimeout(timer));
unCancellableAction(function callback() {
if(canceller.canceled) return; // exit early if it was cancelled
res.send("done");
});
2) Synchronous tasks:
You cannot cancel synchronous tasks directly as the engine is busy doing the task, and can't handle the cancellation. To make them cancellable you have to use polling, the task has to pause its job, check wether it should cancel, and then either continue or abort. In JS that can be done with generator functions (as they can yield their execution):
function runMax(time, action) {
const gen = action(), start = Date.now();
let done, value;
do {
({ done, value } = gen.next());
} while(!done && Date.now() < start + time)
return value;
}
// inside the request handler:
runMax(5000, function* () {
while(true) {
// ... some jobs
// yield at a safe position to allow abortion:
yield;
}
});
I think you need to add inside the while loop the new if statement to break the loop.
eg.:
while (!req.timeout) {
if (!req.timeout) {
break;
}
}
Related
I have an open Websocket connection and it's handing out events. All good, but once a new event arrives, I need to do a whole lot of things and sometimes events arrive so quickly one after the other that there is no time to get the stuff done properly. I need some sort of queue inside this function that tells the events to take it easy and only keep going at most one per second, and otherwise wait in some sort of queue until the second elapses to go ahead and continue.
edit: No external libraries allowed, unfortunately.
ws = new WebSocket(`wss://hallo.com/ws/`);
ws.onmessage = readMessage;
async function readMessage(event) {
print(event)
//do important things
//but not too frequently!
}
How do I do that?
I found this but it goes over my simple head:
"You can have a queue-like promise that keeps on accumulating promises to make sure they run sequentially:
let cur = Promise.resolve();
function enqueue(f) {
cur = cur.then(f); }
function someAsyncWork() {
return new Promise(resolve => {
setTimeout(() => {
resolve('async work done');
}, 5);
}); } async function msg() {
const msg = await someAsyncWork();
console.log(msg); }
const main = async() => {
web3.eth.subscribe('pendingTransactions').on("data", function(tx) {
enqueue(async function() {
console.log('1st print: ',tx);
await msg();
console.log('2nd print: ',tx);
});
}) }
main();
"
I'd honestly use something like lodash's throttle to do this. The following snippet should solve your problem.
ws = new WebSocket(`wss://hallo.com/ws/`);
ws.onmessage = _.throttle(readMessage, 1000);
async function readMessage(event) {
print(event)
//do important things
//but not too frequently!
}
For achieving queuing, you can make use of "settimeout" in simple/core javascript.
Whenever you receive a message from websocket, put the message processing function in a settimeout, this will ensure that the message is processed not immediately as its received, but with a delay, hence in a way you can achieve queuing.
The problem with this is that it does not guarantee that the processing of messages is sequential as they are received if that is needed.
By default settimeout in javascript does give the guarantee of when the function inside will be triggered after the time given is elapsed.
Also it may not reduce the load on your message processor service for a high volume situation and since individual messages are queued two/more functions can become ready to be processed from setimeout within some time frame.
An ideal way to do so would be to create a queue. On a high level code flow this can be achieved as follows
var queue = [];
function getFromQueue() {
return queue.shift();
}
function insertQueue(msg) { //called whenever a new message arrives
queue.push(msg);
console.log("Queue state", queue);
}
// can be used if one does not want to wait for previous message processing to finish
// (function executorService(){
// setTimeout(async () => {
// const data = getFromQueue();
// await processData(data);
// executorService();
// }, 1000)
// })()
(function executorService(){
return new Promise((res, rej) => {
setTimeout(async () => {
const data = getFromQueue();
console.log("Started processing", data)
const resp = await processData(data); //waiting for async processing of message to finish
res(resp);
}, 2000)
}).then((data) =>{
console.log("Successfully processed event", data)
}).catch((err) => {
console.log(err)
}).finally(() => {
executorService();
})
})()
// to simulate async processing of messages
function processData(data){
return new Promise((res, rej) => {
setTimeout(async () => {
console.log("Finished processing", data)
res(data);
}, 4000)
})
}
// to simulate message received by web socket
var i = 0;
var insertRand = setInterval(function(){
insertQueue(i); // this must be called on when web socket message received
i+=1;
}, 1000)
I need to execute unknown number of http requests in a node.js program, and it needs to happen synchronously. only when one get the response the next request will be execute. How can I implement that in JS?
I tried it synchronously with the requset package:
function HttpHandler(url){
request(url, function (error, response, body) {
...
})
}
HttpHandler("address-1")
HttpHandler("address-2")
...
HttpHandler("address-100")
And asynchronously with request-promise:
async function HttpHandler(url){
const res = await request(url)
...
}
HttpHandler("address-1")
HttpHandler("address-2")
...
HttpHandler("address-100")
Non of them work. and as I said I can have unknown number of http request over the program, it depends on the end user.
Any ideas on to handle that?
Use the got() library, not the request() library because the request() library has been deprecated and does not support promises. Then, you can use async/await and a for loop to sequence your calls one after another.
const got = require('got');
let urls = [...]; // some array of urls
async function processUrls(list) {
for (let url of urls) {
await got(url);
}
}
processUrls(urls).then(() => {
console.log("all done");
}).catch(err => {
console.log(err);
});
You are claiming some sort of dynamic list of URLs, but won't show how that works so you'll have to figure out that part of the logic yourself. I'd be happy to show how to solve that part, but you haven't given us any idea how that should work.
If you want a queue that you can regularly add items to, you can do something like this:
class sequencedQueue {
// fn is a function to call on each item in the queue
// if its asynchronous, it should return a promise
constructor(fn) {
this.queue = [];
this.processing = false;
this.fn = fn;
}
add(...items) {
this.queue.push(...items);
return this.run();
}
async run() {
// if not already processing, start processing
// because of await, this is not a blocking while loop
while (!this.processing && this.queue.length) {
try {
this.processing = true;
await this.fn(this.queue.shift());
} catch (e) {
// need to decide what to do upon error
// this is currently coded to just log the error and
// keep processing. To end processing, throw an error here.
console.log(e);
} finally {
this.processing = false;
}
}
}
}
How to implement a timeout in Javascript, not the window.timeout but something like session timeout or socket timeout - basically - a "function timeout"
A specified period of time that will be allowed to elapse in a system
before a specified event is to take place, unless another specified
event occurs first; in either case, the period is terminated when
either event takes place.
Specifically, I want a javascript observing timer that will observe the execution time of a function and if reached or going more than a specified time then the observing timer will stop/notify the executing function.
Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks a lot.
I'm not entirely clear what you're asking, but I think that Javascript does not work the way you want so it cannot be done. For example, it cannot be done that a regular function call lasts either until the operation completes or a certain amount of time whichever comes first. That can be implemented outside of javascript and exposed through javascript (as is done with synchronous ajax calls), but can't be done in pure javascript with regular functions.
Unlike other languages, Javascript is single threaded so that while a function is executing a timer will never execute (except for web workers, but they are very, very limited in what they can do). The timer can only execute when the function finishes executing. Thus, you can't even share a progress variable between a synchronous function and a timer so there's no way for a timer to "check on" the progress of a function.
If your code was completely stand-alone (didn't access any of your global variables, didn't call your other functions and didn't access the DOM in anyway), then you could run it in a web-worker (available in newer browsers only) and use a timer in the main thread. When the web-worker code completes, it sends a message to the main thread with it's results. When the main thread receives that message, it stops the timer. If the timer fires before receiving the results, it can kill the web-worker. But, your code would have to live with the restrictions of web-workers.
Soemthing can also be done with asynchronous operations (because they work better with Javascript's single-threaded-ness) like this:
Start an asynchronous operation like an ajax call or the loading of an image.
Start a timer using setTimeout() for your timeout time.
If the timer fires before your asynchronous operation completes, then stop the asynchronous operation (using the APIs to cancel it).
If the asynchronous operation completes before the timer fires, then cancel the timer with clearTimeout() and proceed.
For example, here's how to put a timeout on the loading of an image:
function loadImage(url, maxTime, data, fnSuccess, fnFail) {
var img = new Image();
var timer = setTimeout(function() {
timer = null;
fnFail(data, url);
}, maxTime);
img.onLoad = function() {
if (timer) {
clearTimeout(timer);
fnSuccess(data, img);
}
}
img.onAbort = img.onError = function() {
clearTimeout(timer);
fnFail(data, url);
}
img.src = url;
}
My question has been marked as a duplicate of this one so I thought I'd answer it even though the original post is already nine years old.
It took me a while to wrap my head around what it means for Javascript to be single-threaded (and I'm still not sure I understood things 100%) but here's how I solved a similar use-case using Promises and a callback. It's mostly based on this tutorial.
First, we define a timeout function to wrap around Promises:
const timeout = (prom, time, exception) => {
let timer;
return Promise.race([
prom,
new Promise((_r, rej) => timer = setTimeout(rej, time, exception))
]).finally(() => clearTimeout(timer));
}
This is the promise I want to timeout:
const someLongRunningFunction = async () => {
...
return ...;
}
Finally, I use it like this.
const TIMEOUT = 2000;
const timeoutError = Symbol();
var value = "some default value";
try {
value = await timeout(someLongRunningFunction(), TIMEOUT, timeoutError);
}
catch(e) {
if (e === timeoutError) {
console.log("Timeout");
}
else {
console.log("Error: " + e);
}
}
finally {
return callback(value);
}
This will call the callback function with the return value of someLongRunningFunction or a default value in case of a timeout. You can modify it to handle timeouts differently (e.g. throw an error).
You could execute the code in a web worker. Then you are still able to handle timeout events while the code is running. As soon as the web worker finishes its job you can cancel the timeout. And as soon as the timeout happens you can terminate the web worker.
execWithTimeout(function() {
if (Math.random() < 0.5) {
for(;;) {}
} else {
return 12;
}
}, 3000, function(err, result) {
if (err) {
console.log('Error: ' + err.message);
} else {
console.log('Result: ' + result);
}
});
function execWithTimeout(code, timeout, callback) {
var worker = new Worker('data:text/javascript;base64,' + btoa('self.postMessage((' + String(code) + '\n)());'));
var id = setTimeout(function() {
worker.terminate();
callback(new Error('Timeout'));
}, timeout);
worker.addEventListener('error', function(e) {
clearTimeout(id);
callback(e);
});
worker.addEventListener('message', function(e) {
clearTimeout(id);
callback(null, e.data);
});
}
I realize this is an old question/thread but perhaps this will be helpful to others.
Here's a generic callWithTimeout that you can await:
export function callWithTimeout(func, timeout) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
const timer = setTimeout(() => reject(new Error("timeout")), timeout)
func().then(
response => resolve(response),
err => reject(new Error(err))
).finally(() => clearTimeout(timer))
})
}
Tests/examples:
export function sleep(ms) {
return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms))
}
const func1 = async () => {
// test: func completes in time
await sleep(100)
}
const func2 = async () => {
// test: func does not complete in time
await sleep(300)
}
const func3 = async () => {
// test: func throws exception before timeout
await sleep(100)
throw new Error("exception in func")
}
const func4 = async () => {
// test: func would have thrown exception but timeout occurred first
await sleep(300)
throw new Error("exception in func")
}
Call with:
try {
await callWithTimeout(func, 200)
console.log("finished in time")
}
catch (err) {
console.log(err.message) // can be "timeout" or exception thrown by `func`
}
You can achieve this only using some hardcore tricks. Like for example if you know what kind of variable your function returns (note that EVERY js function returns something, default is undefined) you can try something like this: define variable
var x = null;
and run test in seperate "thread":
function test(){
if (x || x == undefined)
console.log("Cool, my function finished the job!");
else
console.log("Ehh, still far from finishing!");
}
setTimeout(test, 10000);
and finally run function:
x = myFunction(myArguments);
This only works if you know that your function either does not return any value (i.e. the returned value is undefined) or the value it returns is always "not false", i.e. is not converted to false statement (like 0, null, etc).
Here is my answer which essentially simplifies Martin's answer and is based upon the same tutorial.
Timeout wrapper for a promise:
const timeout = (prom, time) => {
const timeoutError = new Error(`execution time has exceeded the allowed time frame of ${time} ms`);
let timer; // will receive the setTimeout defined from time
timeoutError.name = "TimeoutErr";
return Promise.race([
prom,
new Promise((_r, rej) => timer = setTimeout(rej, time, timeoutError)) // returns the defined timeoutError in case of rejection
]).catch(err => { // handle errors that may occur during the promise race
throw(err);
}) .finally(() => clearTimeout(timer)); // clears timer
}
A promise for testing purposes:
const fn = async (a) => { // resolves in 500 ms or throw an error if a == true
if (a == true) throw new Error('test error');
await new Promise((res) => setTimeout(res, 500));
return "p2";
}
Now here is a test function:
async function test() {
let result;
try { // finishes before the timeout
result = await timeout(fn(), 1000); // timeouts in 1000 ms
console.log('• Returned Value :', result, '\n'); // result = p2
} catch(err) {
console.log('• Captured exception 0 : \n ', err, '\n');
}
try { // don't finish before the timeout
result = await timeout(fn(), 100); // timeouts in 100 ms
console.log(result); // not executed as the timeout error was triggered
} catch (err) {
console.log('• Captured exception 1 : \n ', err, '\n');
}
try { // an error occured during fn execution time
result = await timeout(fn(true), 100); // fn will throw an error
console.log(result); // not executed as an error occured
} catch (err) {
console.log('• Captured exception 2 : \n ', err, '\n');
}
}
that will produce this output:
• Returned Value : p2
• Captured exception 1 :
TimeoutErr: execution time has exceeded the allowed time frame of 100 ms
at C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:33:34
at async test (C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:63:18)
• Captured exception 2 :
Error: test error
at fn (C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:45:26)
at test (C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:72:32)
If you don't want to use try ... catch instructions in the test function you can alternatively replace the throw instructions in the catch part of the timeout promise wrapper by return.
By doing so the result variable will receive the error that is throwed otherwise. You can then use this to detect if the result variable actually contains an error.
if (result instanceof Error) {
// there was an error during execution
}
else {
// result contains the value returned by fn
}
If you want to check if the error is relative to the defined timeout you will have to check the error.name value for "TimeoutErr".
Share a variable between the observing timer and the executing function.
Implement the observing timer with window.setTimeout or window.setInterval. When the observing timer executes, it sets an exit value to the shared variable.
The executing function constantly checks for the variable value.. and returns if the exit value is specified.
How to implement a timeout in Javascript, not the window.timeout but something like session timeout or socket timeout - basically - a "function timeout"
A specified period of time that will be allowed to elapse in a system
before a specified event is to take place, unless another specified
event occurs first; in either case, the period is terminated when
either event takes place.
Specifically, I want a javascript observing timer that will observe the execution time of a function and if reached or going more than a specified time then the observing timer will stop/notify the executing function.
Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks a lot.
I'm not entirely clear what you're asking, but I think that Javascript does not work the way you want so it cannot be done. For example, it cannot be done that a regular function call lasts either until the operation completes or a certain amount of time whichever comes first. That can be implemented outside of javascript and exposed through javascript (as is done with synchronous ajax calls), but can't be done in pure javascript with regular functions.
Unlike other languages, Javascript is single threaded so that while a function is executing a timer will never execute (except for web workers, but they are very, very limited in what they can do). The timer can only execute when the function finishes executing. Thus, you can't even share a progress variable between a synchronous function and a timer so there's no way for a timer to "check on" the progress of a function.
If your code was completely stand-alone (didn't access any of your global variables, didn't call your other functions and didn't access the DOM in anyway), then you could run it in a web-worker (available in newer browsers only) and use a timer in the main thread. When the web-worker code completes, it sends a message to the main thread with it's results. When the main thread receives that message, it stops the timer. If the timer fires before receiving the results, it can kill the web-worker. But, your code would have to live with the restrictions of web-workers.
Soemthing can also be done with asynchronous operations (because they work better with Javascript's single-threaded-ness) like this:
Start an asynchronous operation like an ajax call or the loading of an image.
Start a timer using setTimeout() for your timeout time.
If the timer fires before your asynchronous operation completes, then stop the asynchronous operation (using the APIs to cancel it).
If the asynchronous operation completes before the timer fires, then cancel the timer with clearTimeout() and proceed.
For example, here's how to put a timeout on the loading of an image:
function loadImage(url, maxTime, data, fnSuccess, fnFail) {
var img = new Image();
var timer = setTimeout(function() {
timer = null;
fnFail(data, url);
}, maxTime);
img.onLoad = function() {
if (timer) {
clearTimeout(timer);
fnSuccess(data, img);
}
}
img.onAbort = img.onError = function() {
clearTimeout(timer);
fnFail(data, url);
}
img.src = url;
}
My question has been marked as a duplicate of this one so I thought I'd answer it even though the original post is already nine years old.
It took me a while to wrap my head around what it means for Javascript to be single-threaded (and I'm still not sure I understood things 100%) but here's how I solved a similar use-case using Promises and a callback. It's mostly based on this tutorial.
First, we define a timeout function to wrap around Promises:
const timeout = (prom, time, exception) => {
let timer;
return Promise.race([
prom,
new Promise((_r, rej) => timer = setTimeout(rej, time, exception))
]).finally(() => clearTimeout(timer));
}
This is the promise I want to timeout:
const someLongRunningFunction = async () => {
...
return ...;
}
Finally, I use it like this.
const TIMEOUT = 2000;
const timeoutError = Symbol();
var value = "some default value";
try {
value = await timeout(someLongRunningFunction(), TIMEOUT, timeoutError);
}
catch(e) {
if (e === timeoutError) {
console.log("Timeout");
}
else {
console.log("Error: " + e);
}
}
finally {
return callback(value);
}
This will call the callback function with the return value of someLongRunningFunction or a default value in case of a timeout. You can modify it to handle timeouts differently (e.g. throw an error).
You could execute the code in a web worker. Then you are still able to handle timeout events while the code is running. As soon as the web worker finishes its job you can cancel the timeout. And as soon as the timeout happens you can terminate the web worker.
execWithTimeout(function() {
if (Math.random() < 0.5) {
for(;;) {}
} else {
return 12;
}
}, 3000, function(err, result) {
if (err) {
console.log('Error: ' + err.message);
} else {
console.log('Result: ' + result);
}
});
function execWithTimeout(code, timeout, callback) {
var worker = new Worker('data:text/javascript;base64,' + btoa('self.postMessage((' + String(code) + '\n)());'));
var id = setTimeout(function() {
worker.terminate();
callback(new Error('Timeout'));
}, timeout);
worker.addEventListener('error', function(e) {
clearTimeout(id);
callback(e);
});
worker.addEventListener('message', function(e) {
clearTimeout(id);
callback(null, e.data);
});
}
I realize this is an old question/thread but perhaps this will be helpful to others.
Here's a generic callWithTimeout that you can await:
export function callWithTimeout(func, timeout) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
const timer = setTimeout(() => reject(new Error("timeout")), timeout)
func().then(
response => resolve(response),
err => reject(new Error(err))
).finally(() => clearTimeout(timer))
})
}
Tests/examples:
export function sleep(ms) {
return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms))
}
const func1 = async () => {
// test: func completes in time
await sleep(100)
}
const func2 = async () => {
// test: func does not complete in time
await sleep(300)
}
const func3 = async () => {
// test: func throws exception before timeout
await sleep(100)
throw new Error("exception in func")
}
const func4 = async () => {
// test: func would have thrown exception but timeout occurred first
await sleep(300)
throw new Error("exception in func")
}
Call with:
try {
await callWithTimeout(func, 200)
console.log("finished in time")
}
catch (err) {
console.log(err.message) // can be "timeout" or exception thrown by `func`
}
You can achieve this only using some hardcore tricks. Like for example if you know what kind of variable your function returns (note that EVERY js function returns something, default is undefined) you can try something like this: define variable
var x = null;
and run test in seperate "thread":
function test(){
if (x || x == undefined)
console.log("Cool, my function finished the job!");
else
console.log("Ehh, still far from finishing!");
}
setTimeout(test, 10000);
and finally run function:
x = myFunction(myArguments);
This only works if you know that your function either does not return any value (i.e. the returned value is undefined) or the value it returns is always "not false", i.e. is not converted to false statement (like 0, null, etc).
Here is my answer which essentially simplifies Martin's answer and is based upon the same tutorial.
Timeout wrapper for a promise:
const timeout = (prom, time) => {
const timeoutError = new Error(`execution time has exceeded the allowed time frame of ${time} ms`);
let timer; // will receive the setTimeout defined from time
timeoutError.name = "TimeoutErr";
return Promise.race([
prom,
new Promise((_r, rej) => timer = setTimeout(rej, time, timeoutError)) // returns the defined timeoutError in case of rejection
]).catch(err => { // handle errors that may occur during the promise race
throw(err);
}) .finally(() => clearTimeout(timer)); // clears timer
}
A promise for testing purposes:
const fn = async (a) => { // resolves in 500 ms or throw an error if a == true
if (a == true) throw new Error('test error');
await new Promise((res) => setTimeout(res, 500));
return "p2";
}
Now here is a test function:
async function test() {
let result;
try { // finishes before the timeout
result = await timeout(fn(), 1000); // timeouts in 1000 ms
console.log('• Returned Value :', result, '\n'); // result = p2
} catch(err) {
console.log('• Captured exception 0 : \n ', err, '\n');
}
try { // don't finish before the timeout
result = await timeout(fn(), 100); // timeouts in 100 ms
console.log(result); // not executed as the timeout error was triggered
} catch (err) {
console.log('• Captured exception 1 : \n ', err, '\n');
}
try { // an error occured during fn execution time
result = await timeout(fn(true), 100); // fn will throw an error
console.log(result); // not executed as an error occured
} catch (err) {
console.log('• Captured exception 2 : \n ', err, '\n');
}
}
that will produce this output:
• Returned Value : p2
• Captured exception 1 :
TimeoutErr: execution time has exceeded the allowed time frame of 100 ms
at C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:33:34
at async test (C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:63:18)
• Captured exception 2 :
Error: test error
at fn (C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:45:26)
at test (C:\...\test-promise-race\test.js:72:32)
If you don't want to use try ... catch instructions in the test function you can alternatively replace the throw instructions in the catch part of the timeout promise wrapper by return.
By doing so the result variable will receive the error that is throwed otherwise. You can then use this to detect if the result variable actually contains an error.
if (result instanceof Error) {
// there was an error during execution
}
else {
// result contains the value returned by fn
}
If you want to check if the error is relative to the defined timeout you will have to check the error.name value for "TimeoutErr".
Share a variable between the observing timer and the executing function.
Implement the observing timer with window.setTimeout or window.setInterval. When the observing timer executes, it sets an exit value to the shared variable.
The executing function constantly checks for the variable value.. and returns if the exit value is specified.
For a simple web app that needs to refresh parts of data presented to the user in set intervals, are there any downsides to just using setInterval() to get a JSON from an endpoint instead of using a proper polling framework?
For the sake of an example, let's say I'm refreshing the status of a processing job every 5 seconds.
From my comment:
I would use setTimeout [docs] and always call it when the previous response was received. This way you avoid possible congestion or function stacking or whatever you want to call it, in case a request/response takes longer than your interval.
So something like this:
function refresh() {
// make Ajax call here, inside the callback call:
setTimeout(refresh, 5000);
// ...
}
// initial call, or just call refresh directly
setTimeout(refresh, 5000);
A simple non-blocking poll function can be implemented in recent browsers using Promises:
var sleep = duration => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, duration))
var poll = (promiseFn, duration) => promiseFn().then(
sleep(duration).then(() => poll(promiseFn, duration)))
// Greet the World every second
poll(() => new Promise(() => console.log('Hello World!')), 1000)
You can do just like this:
var i = 0, loop_length = 50, loop_speed = 100;
function loop(){
i+= 1;
/* Here is your code. Balabala...*/
if (i===loop_length) clearInterval(handler);
}
var handler = setInterval(loop, loop_speed);
Just modify #bschlueter's answer, and yes, you can cancel this poll function by calling cancelCallback()
let cancelCallback = () => {};
var sleep = (period) => {
return new Promise((resolve) => {
cancelCallback = () => {
console.log("Canceling...");
// send cancel message...
return resolve('Canceled');
}
setTimeout(() => {
resolve("tick");
}, period)
})
}
var poll = (promiseFn, period, timeout) => promiseFn().then(() => {
let asleep = async(period) => {
let respond = await sleep(period);
// if you need to do something as soon as sleep finished
console.log("sleep just finished, do something...");
return respond;
}
// just check if cancelCallback is empty function,
// if yes, set a time out to run cancelCallback()
if (cancelCallback.toString() === "() => {}") {
console.log("set timout to run cancelCallback()")
setTimeout(() => {
cancelCallback()
}, timeout);
}
asleep(period).then((respond) => {
// check if sleep canceled, if not, continue to poll
if (respond !== 'Canceled') {
poll(promiseFn, period);
} else {
console.log(respond);
}
})
// do something1...
console.log("do something1...");
})
poll(() => new Promise((resolve) => {
console.log('Hello World!');
resolve(); //you need resolve to jump into .then()
}), 3000, 10000);
// do something2...
console.log("do something2....")
I know this is an old question but I stumbled over it, and in the StackOverflow way of doing things I thought I might improve it. You might want to consider a solution similar to what's described here which is known as long polling. OR another solution is WebSockets (one of the better implementations of websockets with the primary objective of working on all browsers) socket.io.
The first solution is basically summarized as you send a single AJAX request and wait for a response before sending an additional one, then once the response has been delivered, queue up the next query.
Meanwhile, on the backend you don't return a response until the status changes. So, in your scenario, you would utilize a while loop that would continue until the status changed, then return the changed status to the page. I really like this solution. As the answer linked above indicates, this is what facebook does (or at least has done in the past).
socket.io is basically the jQuery of Websockets, so that whichever browser your users are in you can establish a socket connection that can push data to the page (without polling at all). This is closer to a Blackberry's instant notifications, which - if you're going for instant, it's the best solution.