Question

I need to record the mouse position every n seconds, but jQuery seems to only offer ways to retrieve the x and y position values when there is a mouse event. Can this be done with setInterval()?

EDIT – I’m thinking to set a setInterval() to increase a value every n seconds (say ‘i’), and then on mousemove record the current i alongside the x and y values. There really should be an easier way than this though

Answer 1

What you can do is bind a function to the mousemove event on the document, and inside the function set a global variable with the mouse position. then every interval you can read the mouse position.

example:

$(document).ready(function () {
    var mousePosition = {'x': 0, 'y': 0};
    $(document).bind('mousemove', function(e) {
        mousePosition = {'x': e.pageX, 'y': e.pageY};
    });

    setInterval(function () {
        // do something with mousePosition
    }, 1000);
});