Ti.mely Native Timer Modules for Titanium

The Ti.mely project provides Titanium access to iOS and Android native timers.  The native nature of these timers can be advantageous for background or long interval poling.

Using Ti.mely

The usage is straightforward, you simply create a new timer object

var timer = timerMod.createTimer();

Attach a listener to listen for the onIntervalChange event as shown below

    function showUpdate(d){
        var msg = "interval changed - interval set to " + d.interval;
            msg += " interval count = " + d.intervalCount;
        Ti.API.info(msg);
    }

    timer.addEventListener('onIntervalChange',showUpdate);

Initialize the timer by calling the start method.  This method takes the interval in milliseconds and an optional debug flag which will print timer information to your console window.

    timer.start({
        interval:2000,
        debug:true
    });

To stop the timer, simply call the stop method as shown below.

  timer.stop();

Native Consideration, ie Side Effects

Each time an interval elapses the onIntervalChange event will be fired.  The firing of this event will cause a trip over the Kroll JavaScript bridge.  For this reason using Ti.mely to implement high speed timers of 500 milliseconds or less could negatively impact app performance.

Get the module

The Ti.mely source code and compiled modules are available on Github(https://github.com/benbahrenburg/ti.mely) under the MIT license.

You can download the compiled modules using the following links

• Android Dist
• iOS Dist

Example app.js

The below sample demonstrates how to use the Ti.mely module.  This app.js is include within the module’s example folder or available for iOS here and Android here.

var timer =  require('ti.mely').createTimer();

var win = Ti.UI.createWindow({
	backgroundColor:'#fff'
});

var how2Label = Ti.UI.createLabel({
	text:"Enter Duration in milliseconds",
	top:20, left:7, right:7, height:20,color:"#000"
});
win.add(how2Label);

var durationText = Ti.UI.createTextField({
	value:1000, top:50, left:7, right:7, height:40, color:"#000"
});
win.add(durationText);

var counterLabel = Ti.UI.createLabel({
	top:100, width:Ti.UI.FILL, height:40,left:7, right:7,color:"#000"
});
win.add(counterLabel);

function showUpdate(d){
	var msg = "interval changed - interval set to " + d.interval;
            msg += " interval count = " + d.intervalCount;
	Ti.API.info(msg);
	counterLabel.text = "Updated " + d.intervalCount  + " times.";
};

var startButton = Ti.UI.createButton({
	title:"Start", top:200, left:7, height:40, width:125
});
win.add(startButton);

startButton.addEventListener('click',function(e){
	counterLabel.text ="Starting Timer";
	timer.addEventListener('onIntervalChange',showUpdate);
	timer.start({
		interval:durationText.value,
		debug:true
	});
});

var stopButton = Ti.UI.createButton({
	title:"Stop", top:200,
	right:7, height:40, width:125
});
win.add(stopButton);

stopButton.addEventListener('click',function(e){
	timer.stop();
	timer.removeEventListener('onIntervalChange',showUpdate);
	counterLabel.text ="Press the Start button to test again";
});

win.open();

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