JavaScript waitForTime

By  on  

I write a lot of tests for new features within Firefox DevTools. We have hundreds of "mochitests" which open the browser and perform synthetic actions like clicking, typing, and other user actions. I've previously written about waitForever which essentially halts following actions without locking the browser. Another utility I enjoy is waitForTime, an async JavaScript function that I can await to give breathing time between two tasks.

Whenever I want to wait a given amount of time between tasks, I employ this function:

function waitForTime(ms) {
  return new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, ms));
}

/* Usage */
await waitForTime(200);
// ...do other thing...
await waitForTime(200);
// ...do next thing ...

It's important to point out that most waitForTime calls don't appear in the final test, since arbitrary timeouts lead to intermittent test failures, but they are helpful in knowing where I need to add polling for some other condition!

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Rotate Elements with CSS Transformations

    I've gone on a million rants about the lack of progress with CSS and how I'm happy that both JavaScript and browser-specific CSS have tried to push web design forward. One of those browser-specific CSS properties we love is CSS transformations. CSS transformations...

  • By
    jQuery Wookmark

    The first thing that hits you when you visit Pinterest is "Whoa, the columns are the same width and the photos are cut to fit just the way they should."  Basic web users probably think nothing of it but as a developer, I can appreciate the...

Discussion

  1. Pavan

    I have this kind of a function in all my apps and I usually name is delay.

  2. Dubbya

    You don’t have to put “async” in front of the function?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!