Question

On my website I use JavaScript/AJAX to do the search and show results while the user is still typing.

HTML (body):

<form action="" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8">
    <p><input type="text" name="q" id="q" value="" onkeyup="doSearch(this.value)" /></p>
</form>

JavaScript (header):

function doSearch(text) {
    // do the ajax stuff here
    // call getResults.php?search=[text]
}

But this could cause a lot of requests coming to the server.

Thus I want to relieve the server by setting up a delay:

Whenever the onkeyup event is fired, the function doSearch() should show an “ajax loading graphic” and wait for 2 seconds. Only if the event is NOT fired again during these 2 seconds, the results should be fetched from the PHP file.

Is there any way to do this? Could you help me please? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

var delayTimer;
function doSearch(text) {
    clearTimeout(delayTimer);
    delayTimer = setTimeout(function() {
        // Do the ajax stuff
    }, 1000); // Will do the ajax stuff after 1000 ms, or 1 s
}