I was experimenting on something which executes a function continuously when the mouse is down. I got it to loop infinitely which is exactly what I wanted but I cannot seem to stop that loop anymore.
I tried doing :-
$(document).on("mouseup mouseout",".someclass",function(){ loop(false) } );
which takes the false argument and should stop the loop. But the loop just goes on infinitely causing the page to crash. I want that infinite loop to stop whenever some event is called, be it mouseup, mouseout, mouseleave whichever.
My attempt so far:- http://jsfiddle.net/ZQTvN/
Do realize that this will crash your browser.
You can alter the code to use a flag and a setTimeout to achieve what you want:
A tight loop like this (busy-loop) will block any input from the browser so it is basically unable to parse the event queue, ie. browser gets locked.
By implementing a setTimout to do the loop you will allow the browser to queue other events as well, which you would need to detect when to stop it.
If you call your loop with an argument each time you will in fact only re-trigger it multiple times. When you call with false flag the flag will be local to that call and do nothing with the other loops that has started as they don't have access to this locallized flag.
So one approach is to put the flag outside(common flag, global scope):
MODIFIED FIDDLE HERE
Example:
var doLoop = false;
function loopy() {
if (doLoop === true) {
setTimeout(function () {
console.log(doLoop);
loopy();
}, 11);
}
};
$(document).on("mousedown", ".classy", function () {
doLoop = true;
loopy();
});
$(document).on("mouseup mouseout", ".classy", function () {
doLoop = false;
});
Now you can see the loop runs while holding the mouse down, and stops when released etc.
Related
I have a probably really simple question but did not find anything about this or maybe did not find the right words for my problem.
If have a function to be executed on keypress which also changes my variable A - fine, and it works.
But now I want to give an alternative value to my variable A if the keypress event is not happening.
So I'm looking for the correct command for the naive logic of
if ("keypress event happens") {
A = 1
} else {
A = 2
}
Is there any way to do that in js or jquery with simple true/false checks for the key event?
I've been trying and trying and it did not work once.
Usually, the way one solves this problem is with a setTimeout(). You set the timer for N seconds. If the keypress happens, you cancel the timer. If the keypress doesn't happen, the timer will fire giving you your alternate event.
You probably wrap this in some sort of function that you can trigger whenever you want, but you didn't share the overall context so this is just the general idea:
$("#myObj").keypress(function(e) {
if (timer) {
clearTimeout(timer);
}
// process key
});
var timer = setTimeout(function() {
timer = null;
// key didn't happen within the alltoted time so fire the alternate behavior
}, 5000);
So I've got a scroll event. It does a load of stuff to work out whether something should be moved on the page. When you scroll down, it fires off. If you wheel down, drag, it fires of bazillions and bazillions of times. As you'd expect, perhaps. Here's some simple dummy code to represent the sequence of events.
function scroller() {
// 1. A really expensive calculation that depends on the scroll position
// 2. Another expensive calculation to work out where should be now
// 3. Stop current animations
// 4. Animate an object to new position based on 1 and 2
}
$(window).on('resize' scroller);
Don't get me wrong, it's usually accurate so there isn't so much a concurrency issue. My animations inside the event call .stop() (as part #3) so the latest version is always* the right one but it's eating up a lot of CPU. I'd like to be a responsible developer here, not expecting every user to have a quad core i7.
So to my question... Can I kill off previous calls to my method from a particular event handler? Is there any way I can interfere with this stack of queued/parallel-running "processes" so that when a new one is added to the stack, the old ones are terminated instantly? I'm sure there's a concurrency-minded way of wording this but I can't think of it.
*At least I think that's the case - if the calculations took longer in an earlier run, their animation could be the last one to be called and could cock up the entire run! Hmm. I hadn't thought about that before thinking about it here. Another reason to stop the previous iterations immediately!
You can ensure the event is fired a maximum of once per x milliseconds. E.g.:
(function ($) {
$.fn.delayEvent = function (event, callback, ms) {
var whichjQuery = parseFloat($().jquery, 10)
, bindMethod = whichjQuery > 1.7 ? "on" : "bind"
, timer = 0;
$(this)[bindMethod](event, function (event) {
clearTimeout (timer);
timer = setTimeout($.proxy(callback, this, event), ms);
});
return $(this);
};
})(jQuery);
$(window).delayEvent("resize", scroller, 1000);
Minimalistic demo: http://jsfiddle.net/karim79/z2Qhz/6/
I've faced the following scenario quite often so I'm wondering if there is a built-in jQuery way of solving the issue.
Imagine the following code:
$(document).click(function() {
paintCanvas();
});
The problem with this code is that if the user clicks on the screen 50 times in rapid succession you are going to overload the browser with 50 calls to paintCanvas.
If paintCanvas is currently executing and a new request is created, we want to queue the new request so that it waits until paintCanvas is finished executing. However, at the same time, we can drop any previously queued calls to paintCanvas as we only care about the final state of the mouse, not all the intermediate states.
Here is some code that solves the problem:
var _isExecuting, _isQueued;
function paintCanvas() {
if (_isExecuting) {
if (!_isQueued) {
_isQueued = true;
setTimeout(function() {
_isQueued = false;
paintCanvas();
}, 150);
}
return;
}
_isExecuting = true;
// ... code goes here
_isExecuting = false;
};
This AJAX queue plugin essentially implements this functionality, but does so only in terms of AJAX. Surely this is a very common problem that can be solved in more generic way?
You shouldn't have to solve this problem with mousemove because the system already does that for you. While paintCanvas is executing, it is not generating hundreds of mousemove events even if the mouse is moving vigorously. Rather, the next event will be the current location of the mouse, not a queue of all the intervening mouse events.
Look at this jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/4ZuMn/.
Wiggle your mouse around in the body (lower, right pane) as fast as you want. Then move the mouse out of the pane and notice that the count stops immediately - there are no more mouse events. It doesn't stack up mouse events ever. Whenever the system is ready for the next mouse event, it gets the latest position of the mouse. Individual mouse moves are NOT queued up - they do not accumulate. You can also see in the listing of mouse events that lots of intervening mouse events are not present (e.g. lots of coordinates are missing) even though the mouse went through more positions. This is because the system wasn't ready to make a mouse event when the mouse was in that position so that position was skipped.
Further, because javascript is single threaded, you will never get a new mouse event while you are currently processing one. The system won't generate a new one until you're done processing the one you're already one. So, you will never, ever see _isExecuting as true in javascript in your code. You simply don't need that check. And, since you don't need that check and it will never be true, none of your queuing code will ever execute. You can see here in this jsFiddle, that you can never catch a mousemove event that was re-entered: http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/ngnUT/. The inAction flag is never caught as true, no matter how fast or much you wiggle your mouse around.
Sounds like you want throttle/debounce features.
There are no built in methods that I know of from jQuery, you can use any of these though:
http://benalman.com/projects/jquery-throttle-debounce-plugin/
http://jsperf.com/jquery-throttle-methods
Though #rkw provided a link, I always prefer to show code here on SO. Here's some simple code that kind does what you want. A function that returns a buffered version of another function. This will keep delaying until it stops receiving the event for the given delay. You can tweak this if you don't want to to wait for the delay after the last event. All you'd need to do is keep track of when you first set the timeout and offset the subsequent calls to setTimeout.
Here's a working example http://jsfiddle.net/mendesjuan/qfFjZ/
function createBuffered(handler, delay) {
var timeoutId = null;
return function() {
var me = this;
if (timeoutId) {
window.clearTimeout(timeoutId);
}
timeoutId = setTimeout(function() {
handle.apply(me, arguments);
timeoutId = null;
}, delay);
}
}
I'm in the process of authoring a completely client side web language reference site. A problem that I encountered today; I have a side panel that is a unordered list of terms and they have onmouseover event listeners. I decided it would be a good idea to add a delay prior to execution and cancel the event at run-time if the mouse was no longer over that element. This is what I've come up with but I feel there must be a better way.
var currentXCoordinate=0
var currentYCoordinate=0
var elementFromCurrentMousePosition=0
function trackCurrentMousePosition(event) {
if (document.elementFromPoint(event.clientX, event.clientY).nodeName=="SPAN") {
elementFromCurrentMousePosition=document.elementFromPoint(event.clientX, event.clientY).parentNode
}
else {
elementFromCurrentMousePosition=document.elementFromPoint(event.clientX, event.clientY)
}
return (currentXCoordinate=event.clientX, currentYCoordinate=event.clientY, elementFromCurrentMousePosition)
}
function initPreview(event, obj) {
arg1=event
arg2=obj
setTimeout("setPreviewDataFields(arg1, arg2)", 100)
}
function setPreviewDataFields(event, obj) {
if ('bubbles' in event) {
event.stopPropagation()
}
else {
event.cancelBubble=true
}
if (elementFromCurrentMousePosition!=obj) {
return 0;
}
The code goes on to do all the wonderful stuff I want it to do if execution wasn't cancelled by the previous if statement. The problem is this method is seeming to be really processor intensive.
To sum it up: on page load all my event listeners are registered, cursor position is being tracked by a onmousemove event. Applicable list items have a onmouseover event that calls the initPreview function which just waits a given period of time before calling the actual setPreviewDataFields function. If at run-time the cursor is no longer over the list element the function stops by return 0.
Sadly that's the best I could come up with. If anyone can offer up a better solution I would be very grateful.
Why not just use mouseout to tell when the mouse leaves an element? Running all of that code every time the mouse moves isn't ideal.
Also, you really shouldn't pass a string to setTimeout like that. Instead, pass a function. As a bonus, you can get rid of those evil global variables arg1 and arg2. With those being globals, I think you will run into issues if init gets called again before the timeout expires.
In my web app, I use the onkeydown event to capture key strokes.
For example, I capture the 'j' key to animate a scroll down the page (and do some other stuff meanwhile).
My problem is the user might keep the 'j' key down to scroll further down the page (this is equivalent to fast multiple key strokes).
In my app, this result in a series of animations that doesn't look that good.
How can I know when the key has been released, and know the amount of key stokes I should have captured? This way I could run one long animation instead of multiple short ones.
Building on #JMD:
var animate = false;
function startanimation()
{
animate = true;
runanimation();
}
function stopanimation()
{
animate = false;
}
function runanimation()
{
if ( animation_over )
{
if ( !animate )
{
return;
}
return startanimation();
}
// animation code
var timeout = 25;
setTimeout(function(){runanimation();},timeout);
}
document.onkeydown = startanimation;
document.onkeyup = stopanimation;
You'll need to add some checks for starting/ending animations, however.
Edit: added a return to the JS; would've recursed endlessly.
Rather than trying to stack up the animations, you could start an animation on keyDown, and if at the end of the animation you haven't yet received keyUp then start another animation. As soon as you reach the end of an animation and you do have keyUp then you're done.
setTimeout returns a timer ID. So what I would do is after you receive a keyDown event, I would start a timer with a very short wait period, like so:
var globalTimerId = -1;
var keyDownCount = 0;
function handleKeyDown(e) {
if (globalTimerId != -1) {
clearTimeout(globalTimerId);
keyDownCount++;
}
/* 500 means 1/2 a second, adjust for your needs */
globalTimerId = setTimeout(handleKeyDownAfterWait, 500);
keyDownCount = 1;
}
function handleKeyDownAfterWait() {
globalTimerId = -1;
/* keyDownCount will have the number of times handleKeyDown was called */
}
So the idea is that each time a keyDown event is received, the timer is cleared (assuming it hasn't elapsed yet) and restarted. If the timer expires, the user has let go of the key and you can handle that in handleKeyDownAfterWait.
There may be other more elegant solutions with jQuery or another JS library however. This is just something quick and dirty (and possibly buggy ;))
you can try using my repsonsiveness plugin see:
http://notetodogself.blogspot.com/2008/12/jquery-responsiveness-plugin-for-fast.html
see the demo here:
http://doesthatevencompile.com/current-projects/jquery.responsiveness/
the one where you type stuff fast. you can adapt that to your needs. like so:
the animation event will be bound with the plugin, and execute when the user stops doing something fast. you can count how many times he does the fast thing by normal binding of the event.