Fun with Intervals [Archive URL] [Comments: 4]

There are several tricks to working with Intervals that makes them easy to manage and change.&

The ids for intervals are numbers globally in the player. When you create an interval with setInterval, it returns a unique id for the interval you set starting with 1 and iterating higher.

myInterval = setInterval(function(){trace('I1')},100)
trace(myInterval) //1

myInterval = setInterval(function(){trace('I2')},100)
trace(myInterval) //2

myInterval = setInterval(function(){trace('I3')},100)
trace(myInterval) //3

//clearing the intervals you have set it even easier.

clearInterval(1)
clearInterval(2)
clearInterval(3)

Another interesting patterns is creating a generic Interval function that you can add functions into. The following function will attempt to execute every object stored within the function.

intervalCore = function(){
var self = arguments.callee
for( var x in self) self[x]()
}
myInterval = setInterval(intervalCore,100)

intervalCore.one = function(){trace('one')}
intervalCore.two = function(){trace('two')}
intervalCore.three = function(){trace('three')}

//delete the items in the interval:

delete intervalCore.one
delete intervalCore.two
delete intervalCore.three

Or if you simply want to clear out all the Intervals within the Flash Player:

i = setInterval(function(){},100) + 1
while(i--){
clearInterval(i)
}

Cheers,

Ted ;)