Question

After spending the last 45 minutes looking around for a solution, I can’t seem to find an easy solution to creating a countdown timer using PHP and jQuery. Most already built scripts I’ve found are based purely on jQuery which require a ton of code, and more parameters then they should, plus, adaptability is pretty hard.

Here’s my situation;

PHP:

$countdown = date("h:i:s"); // This isn't my actual $countdown variable, just a placeholder

jQuery:

$(document).ready(function name() {
    $("#this").load( function() {  
        setTimeout("name()", 1000)
      }
    }
});

HTML:

<div id="this"><?php echo($countdown); ?></div>

My idea is that, every second, #this is reloaded, giving a new value to it’s contents, and as $countdown isn’t a static variable, a new value will be loaded each time. This removes the need to deal with sessions (as a basic javascript countdown timer would reset on pageload, etc).

I would’ve though this would have worked, until I realized that the event binder .load() doesn’t reload #this (I know silly me), so I guess what I’m wondering is – is there an event binder I can use to make this work or is there a way to get the functionality I’m looking for, without using a jQuery plugin (which doesn’t match exactly what I want anyway)?

Answer 1

You should use Keith Wood’s countdown timer: http://keith-wood.name/countdown.html

It is extremely easy to use.

All you have to do is

$('#timer').countdown({
    until: '<?php echo date("h:i:s"); ?>' // change this, obviously
});

Here’s the fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/tqyj4/289/