Question

I have problems when certain functions in my code are executed in quick succession. I thought maybe a few lines of javascript would prevent trigger-happy folks.

So here’s what I hoped to use.

   function change(){
   if(mod == 1 || mod == null){
   var mod=2;
   //function goes here    
   window.setTimeout(function(){var mod=1;}, 500);
   }

Is there a way to do this that actually works?

I also feel there should be a more global approach to this I’m not thinking of.

Answer 1

You can throttle or debounce the callback. There’s a nice (jQuery-optional) library that wraps all this up for you: jQuery throttle/debounce.

jQuery throttle / debounce allows you to rate-limit your functions in multiple useful ways. Passing a delay and callback to $.throttle returns a new function that will execute no more than once every delay milliseconds. Passing a delay and callback to $.debounce returns a new function that will execute only once, coalescing multiple sequential calls into a single execution at either the very beginning or end.

Since you just commented that you want to

disable the function until a period of time has passed

it sounds like you’re looking for the debounce use-case.