/timers-browserify

timers module for browserify

Primary LanguageJavaScriptOtherNOASSERTION

Overview

Adds support for the timers module to browserify.

Wait, isn't it already supported in the browser?

The public methods of the timers module are:

  • setTimeout(callback, delay, [arg], [...])
  • clearTimeout(timeoutId)
  • setInterval(callback, delay, [arg], [...])
  • clearInterval(intervalId)

and indeed, browsers support these already.

So, why does this exist?

The timers module also includes some private methods used in other built-in Node.js modules:

  • enroll(item, delay)
  • unenroll(item)
  • active(item)

These are used to efficiently support a large quantity of timers with the same timeouts by creating only a few timers under the covers.

Node.js also offers the immediate APIs, which aren't yet available cross-browser, so we polyfill those:

  • setImmediate(callback, [arg], [...])
  • clearImmediate(immediateId)

I need lots of timers and want to use linked list timers as Node.js does.

Linked lists are efficient when you have thousands (millions?) of timers with the same delay. Take a look at timers-browserify-full in this case.

License

MIT