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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T15:30:43+00:00

I’m still new to JQuery, on the way to getting my ajax example to

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I’m still new to JQuery, on the way to getting my ajax example to work i got stalled with setTimeout. I have broken it down to to where it should add “.” to the div every second.

The relevant code is in two files.

index.html

<html><head>
<script type='text/javascript' src='jquery.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='myCode.js'></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id='board'>Text</div>
</body>
</html>

and myCode.js

(function(){
   $(document).ready(function() {update();});

   function update() { 
      $("#board").append(".");
      setTimeout('update()', 1000);     }
 })();

the myCode.js file works alright and “update()” runs the first time through but never again.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You’ve got a couple of issues here.

    Firstly, you’re defining your code within an anonymous function. This construct:

    (function() {
  ...
)();

    does two things. It defines an anonymous function and calls it. There are scope reasons to do this but I’m not sure it’s what you actually want.

    You’re passing in a code block to setTimeout(). The problem is that update() is not within scope when executed like that. It however if you pass in a function pointer instead so this works:

    (function() {
  $(document).ready(function() {update();});

  function update() { 
    $("#board").append(".");
    setTimeout(update, 1000);     }
  }
)();

    because the function pointer update is within scope of that block.

    But like I said, there is no need for the anonymous function so you can rewrite it like this:

    $(document).ready(function() {update();});

function update() { 
  $("#board").append(".");
  setTimeout(update, 1000);     }
}

    or

    $(document).ready(function() {update();});

function update() { 
  $("#board").append(".");
  setTimeout('update()', 1000);     }
}

    and both of these work. The second works because the update() within the code block is within scope now.

    I also prefer the $(function() { ... } shortened block form and rather than calling setTimeout() within update() you can just use setInterval() instead:

    $(function() {
  setInterval(update, 1000);
});

function update() {
  $("#board").append(".");
}

    Hope that clears that up.

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