Question

I have a little script that checks for cookies and I was wondering how I could do it so that it did this automatically rather than on page refresh?

My code is:

if(!$.cookie("popbox")){
   if(!$.cookie("visited") && !$.cookie("firstvisit")){
      var expirydate = new Date();
      expirydate.setTime(expirydate.getTime() + (1 * 60 * 1000));
      $.cookie("popbox", "feedback_popup", { expires: expirydate });
      $.cookie("firstvisit", 1, { expires: 9999 });
   } else {
      if(!$.cookie("visited") && $.cookie("firstvisit")){
         showPopuptimer();
      }
   }
}

Answer 1

If you mean you want the code to run periodically while the page is being shown, you can use setInterval, which will call the function you give it on a specific interval (more or less), or a chained series of setTimeout calls (setTimeout calls the function you give it once; you’d then have the function call setTimeout again). (Those links are to Mozilla documentation, but these calls exist in all browsers.)

I tend to prefer chained serieses of setTimeout calls because it’s harder to have them get away from you; setInterval just keeps happening until/unless you call clearInterval on the handle it returns.

So for instance:

checkTheCookies(); // The initial check on page load
function checkTheCookies() {
    if(!$.cookie("popbox")){
       if(!$.cookie("visited") && !$.cookie("firstvisit")){
          var expirydate = new Date();
          expirydate.setTime(expirydate.getTime() + (1 * 60 * 1000));
          $.cookie("popbox", "feedback_popup", { expires: expirydate });
          $.cookie("firstvisit", 1, { expires: 9999 });
       } else {
          if(!$.cookie("visited") && $.cookie("firstvisit")){
             showPopuptimer();
          }
       }
    }

    // Schedule the next check 15 seconds later (time in milliseconds)
    setTimeout(checkTheCookies, 150000);
}

You might need an if in there for if you have some kind of pop-up showing and don’t want to do the check while the pop-up is there.