There are two (mostly used) types of timer function in javascript setTimeout and setInterval (other)
Both these methods have same signature. They take a call back function and delay time as parameter.
setTimeout executes only once after the delay whereas setInterval keeps on calling the callback function after every delay milisecs.
both these methods returns an integer identifier that can be used to clear them before the timer expires.
clearTimeout and clearInterval both these methods take an integer identifier returned from above functions setTimeout and setInterval
Example:
setTimeout
alert("before setTimeout");
setTimeout(function(){
alert("I am setTimeout");
},1000); //delay is in milliseconds
alert("after setTimeout");
If you run the the above code you will see that it alerts before setTimeout and then after setTimeout finally it alerts I am setTimeout after 1sec (1000ms)
What you can notice from the example is that the setTimeout(...) is asynchronous which means it doesn't wait for the timer to get elapsed before going to next statement i.e alert("after setTimeout");
Example:
setInterval
alert("before setInterval"); //called first
var tid = setInterval(function(){
//called 5 times each time after one second
//before getting cleared by below timeout.
alert("I am setInterval");
},1000); //delay is in milliseconds
alert("after setInterval"); //called second
setTimeout(function(){
clearInterval(tid); //clear above interval after 5 seconds
},5000);
If you run the the above code you will see that it alerts before setInterval and then after setInterval finally it alerts I am setInterval 5 times after 1sec (1000ms) because the setTimeout clear the timer after 5 seconds or else every 1 second you will get alert I am setInterval Infinitely.
How browser internally does that?
I will explain in brief.
To understand that you have to know about event queue in javascript. There is a event queue implemented in browser. Whenever an event get triggered in js, all of these events (like click etc.. ) are added to this queue. When your browser has nothing to execute it takes an event from queue and executes them one by one.
Now, when you call setTimeout or setInterval your callback get registered to an timer in browser and it gets added to the event queue after the given time expires and eventually javascript takes the event from the queue and executes it.
This happens so, because javascript engine are single threaded and they can execute only one thing at a time. So, they cannot execute other javascript and keep track of your timer. That is why these timers are registered with browser (browser are not single threaded) and it can keep track of timer and add an event in the queue after the timer expires.
same happens for setInterval only in this case the event is added to the queue again and again after the specified interval until it gets cleared or browser page refreshed.
Note
The delay parameter you pass to these functions is the minimum delay
time to execute the callback. This is because after the timer expires
the browser adds the event to the queue to be executed by the
javascript engine but the execution of the callback depends upon your
events position in the queue and as the engine is single threaded it
will execute all the events in the queue one by one.
Hence, your callback may sometime take more than the specified delay time to be called specially when your other code blocks the thread and not giving it time to process what's there in the queue.
And as I mentioned javascript is single thread. So, if you block the thread for long.
Like this code
while(true) { //infinite loop
}
Your user may get a message saying page not responding.
