Question

I have a function that runs on a click event that uses javascript’s setIterval for some of my animations (i’m doing a game) so the problem is that if a user clicks while the animation is still displaying (setInterval is still executing) the setInterval is stacking up in the event stack or that is what I found out thus either crushing my game or running twice as fast (the animation). My question is is there any way to prevent event stacking? I do not want the setInterval to stack up on the previous setInterval and so on. I know that I could use clearInterval function like so:

  var timerInterval = setInterval(drawPlayerRunning, 50);
  clearInterval(timerInterval);

but it does not really work as I want it to, because what if user clicks many times while the function is still is executing, the clearInterval will only get rid of last event of the event stack leaving all the previous ones still in the “game”. Any idea how to prevent this event stack up, or at least removing them efficiently?

Answer 1

You can create a flag that monitors the interval state:
1)

var isIntervalInProgress = false;
setInterval(function()
{
  if ( isIntervalInProgress )
    return false;

  isIntervalInProgress = true;

  drawPlayerRunning();

  isIntervalInProgress = false;

}, 50);

or just a timeout that will run itself once it’s finished:
2)

var func = function()
{
  setTimeout(function()
  {
    drawPlayerRunning();
    func();
  }, 50)
}

whichever you like