Pausing remoteTimer

This is a simple example on how to create a remoteTimer that can be paused by the user, in this case this is done over a checkbox.

Because the ajax-Helper offers little help in this case, we need the help of javascript. We also have to simulate pausing with start and stop, because the prototype remoteTimer doesn’t offer it.

Javascript
First of all we need a variable to store the timer, in order to be able to stop it later.

var mytimer = null;

Next we need a function to start the timer with the important parameters.

function startTimer(url, update, frequency) {
  mytimer = new PeriodicalExecuter(function() {
      new  Ajax.Updater(update, url , {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true,
          requestHeaders:['X-Update', update]})}, frequency);
}

And for last we need a function to stop the timer.

function stopTimer() {
  mytimer.stop();
}

View
Now we can use the javascript-functions in the view.

echo $javascript->codeBlock("startTimer('/yourapp/posts/view', 'mydiv', 5)");
echo $form->checkbox('pause', array('checked' => true,
  'onclick' => "if (this.checked){
    startTimer('/yourapp/posts/view', 'mydiv', 5);
  } else {
    stopTimer();
  }"));