🟨JavaScript setTimeout and setInterval

delaying and repeating events

At times, we may wish to

• delay an event (JavaScript has something called setTimeout)

• repeat an event at regular intervals (there's also setInterval)

Both methods take in two parameters: the function and the delay (in milliseconds):

setTimeout

With setTimeout, we insert whatever function we want to delay into the first parameter, then specify the length of that delay (in milliseconds) into the second parameter:

setTimeout(function() { 
    console.log('This gets logged to the console after 5 seconds') 
}, 5000)

// or we could write it like this: 
const logLate = () => console.log('This gets logged to the console after 5 seconds')
setTimeout(logLate, 5000)

setInterval

The setInterval function follows the same shape as setTimeout:

setInterval(function() {
    console.log('This will log onto the console every 5 seconds')
}, 5000)

// or we could write it like this:
const logContinuously = () => console.log('This will log onto the console every 5 seconds')
setInterval(logContinuously, 5000)

clearInterval

We may also stop the interval after a given amount of time by passing it into a clearInterval within a setTimeout:

const myInterval = setInterval(function() {
    console.log('This will log onto the console every 5 seconds')
}, 5000) 

setTimeout(function() {
    clearInterval(myInterval)
    console.log('The interval has stopped after 50 seconds')
}, 50000)