Viewing all the timeouts/intervals in javascript?

Question

I'm writing an application that utilizes JavaScript timeouts and intervals to update the page. Is there a way to see how many intervals are setup? I want to make sure that I'm not accidentally going to kill the browser by having hundreds of intervals setup.

Is this even an issue?

Answer 1

I don't think there is a way to enumerate active timers, but you could override window.setTimeout and window.clearTimeout and replace them with your own implementations which do some tracking and then call the originals.

window.originalSetTimeout=window.setTimeout;
window.originalClearTimeout=window.clearTimeout;
window.activeTimers=0;

window.setTimeout=function(func,delay)
{
    window.activeTimers++;
    return window.originalSetTimeout(func,delay);
};

window.clearTimeout=function(timerID)
{
    window.activeTimers--;
    window.originalClearTimeout(timerID);
};

Of course, you might not always call clearTimeout, but this would at least give you some way to track what is happening at runtime.

Answer 2

I made a Chrome DevTools extension that shows all intervals. Cleared ones are greyed out.

setInterval-sniffer

Answer 3

Seeing as Paul has only covered setTimeout I thought I would share a counter for setInterval/clearInterval.

window.originalSetInterval = window.setInterval;
window.originalClearInterval = window.clearInterval;
window.activeIntervals = 0;
window.setInterval = function (func, delay)
{
    if(func && delay){
            window.activeIntervals++;
    }
    return window.originalSetInterval(func,delay);
};
window.clearInterval = function (intervalId)
{
    // JQuery sometimes hands in true which doesn't count
    if(intervalId !== true){
        window.activeIntervals--;
    }
    return window.originalClearInterval(intervalId);
};

Answer 4

Instead of just have a count of timers, here is an implementation which stores all timerid's into an array. It only shows active timers while the accepted answer only counts calls to setTimeout & clearTimeout.

(function(w) {
    var oldST = w.setTimeout;
    var oldSI = w.setInterval;
    var oldCI = w.clearInterval;
    var timers = [];
    w.timers = timers;
    w.setTimeout = function(fn, delay) {
        var id = oldST(function() {
            fn && fn();
            removeTimer(id);
        }, delay);
        timers.push(id);
        return id;
    };
    w.setInterval = function(fn, delay) {
        var id = oldSI(fn, delay);
        timers.push(id);
        return id;
    };
    w.clearInterval = function(id) {
        oldCI(id);
        removeTimer(id);
    };
    w.clearTimeout = w.clearInterval;

    function removeTimer(id) {
        var index = timers.indexOf(id);
        if (index >= 0)
            timers.splice(index, 1);
    }
}(window));

This is how you can get the count of active timers on the page:

timers.length;

This is how you can remove all active timers:

for(var i = timers.length; i--;)
    clearInterval(timers[i]);

Known limitations:

• You can only pass a function (not a string) to setTimeout with this monkey patch.
• The function assumes clearInterval and clearTimeout do the same, which they do but it could change in the future.

Answer 5

We've just published a package solving this exact issue.

npm install time-events-manager

With that, you can view and manage them via timeoutCollection object (and javascript's intervals viaintervalCollection object).

timeoutCollection.getScheduled(); timeoutCollection.getCompleted(); timeoutCollection.getAll();

Answer 6

I just needed something like this and this is what I've put together:

window.setInterval = function (window, setInterval) {
    if (!window.timers) {
        window.timers = {};
    }
    if (!window.timers.intervals) {
        window.timers.intervals = {};
    }
    if (!window.timers.intervals.active) {
        window.timers.intervals.active = {};
    }
    return function (func, interval) {
        var id = setInterval(func, interval);
        window.timers.intervals.active[id] = func;
        return id;
    }
}(window, window.setInterval);

window.clearInterval = function (window, clearInterval) {
    if (!window.timers) {
        window.timers = {};
    }
    if (!window.timers.intervals) {
        window.timers.intervals = {};
    }
    if (!window.timers.intervals.inactive) {
        window.timers.intervals.inactive = {};
    }
    return function (id) {
        if (window.timers.intervals.active && window.timers.intervals.active[id]) {
            window.timers.intervals.inactive[id] = window.timers.intervals.active[id];
            clearInterval(id);
            delete window.timers.intervals.active[id];
        }
    }
}(window, window.clearInterval);

This records the interval ids along with their functions, and also keeps track of their status (active/inactive).