Funny discussion today on twitter about "
why on Earth IE still does not support extra arguments with setTimeout and setInterval" ... oh, well ...
The execScript Behaviour
Somebody in IE team thinks that the rest of the world should avoid extra arguments because of a bloody
edge case as the third argument in IE is:
// ... seriously ...
setTimeout("Msgbox('WTF')", 0, "VBScript");
What IE Users Could Do
Well, rather than create a closure every bloody time we would like to reuse a function with different arguments, something posible 10 years ago via ActionScript 1, every web developer (and not only) misses the opportunity to avoid closures using a de-facto standard for some unknown reason not part yet of ECMAScript specifications.
For those interested I will show an example later, right now let's think about a solution compatible with VBScript for those mental developers, as I have been, brave enough to still use this language for some purpose.
setTimeout(function () {
// a closure for *this* edge case only
// rather than all cases "trapped" because of this!
execScript("Msgbox('WTF')", "VBScript");
}, 0);
Exactly The Same Behaviour!
Yes, if we use a string for setTimeout or setInterval this will be executed on the global scope, regardless where we defined this timer.
Accordingly, the latter example via execScript does exactly the same, since execScript executes synchronously on the global scope, and once trapped behind a timer, nothing change, same result .... happy? No, you are not!
The Classic Closure
The most common situation where we have problems is when we have a portable function defined somewhere else and we would like to use this function passing certain arguments there.
// somewhere else in the scope
function doStuff(obj) {
obj.stuffDone = true;
}
// later in our super cool application
setTimeout(
// the infamous closure
function () {
doStuff(myObj);
},
1000
);
The worst case scenario is where we would like to define timers inside a loop and unfortunately this is a truly common pattern that causes me repeated WTF tilt in my mind:
for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
setTimeout(
// the double infamous closure pattern
(function(obj){
// the infamous closure
return function () {
doStuff(obj);
};
}(collection[i])),
1000
);
}
Closures And Scope Lookup Costs
Every time we access an outer scope variables we do a lookup in the ... well, outer scope. Every time we create a closure we pass through a function expression activation plus we create a nested scope that has to perform a scope lookup to access the outer function/variable.
Whenever this description makes sense or not,
here the test you can try with not so powerful devices or mobile phones and tablet.
In my Atom N270 netbook that test is quite explicit:
50% less performances for each nested closure and its inline invoke.
Speed UP!!!
I have already described this pattern but I keep seeing too few developers adopting it.
for (var
createdOnce = function (obj) {
return function () {
doStuff(obj);
};
},
i = 0; i < 10; i++
) {
setTimeout(createdOnce(collection[i]), 1000);
}
Above example creates 11 functions rather than 20, which means we allocate and garbage collect
loop + 1 functions rather than
loop * 2.
Speed UP MORE!!!
The best part is that every browser I have tested but IE supports one or more argument with both setTimeout and setInterval.
for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
setTimeout(doStuff, 1000, collection[i]);
}
How many extra/redundant/superflous closures and inline invoke we have created?
0.
How Difficult It Is
.. not at all.
It's pretty straight forward and
it costs nothing for IE considering that you never bothered with this problem and you reached this point rather than skip this whole post at the beginning ... well, thanks for your attention :D , and this is your solution:
setTimeout(function (one) {
// only if not supported ...
if (!one) {
var
slice = [].slice,
// trap original versions
Timeout = setTimeout,
Interval = setInterval,
// create a delegate
delegate = function (callback, $arguments) {
$arguments = slice.call($arguments, 2);
return function () {
callback.apply(null, $arguments);
};
}
;
// redefine original versions
setTimeout = function (callback, delay) {
return Timeout(delegate(callback, arguments), delay);
};
setInterval = function (callback, delay) {
return Interval(delegate(callback, arguments), delay);
};
}
}, 0, 1);
Not Obtrusive
If we use above script at the very beginning of our web page there are extremely rare chances that the next script won't be able to use already the fixed version of setInterval and setTimeout for IE only.
If another script includes the same logic
nothing will be redefined for the simple reason that variable
one will be there so no double reassignment will be performed.
In the very safe scenario, considering we are inside our bigger outer scope created for our library, we can define those references as internal:
(function(){
// the beginning of our lib
var
setTimeout = window.setTimeout,
setInterval = window.setInterval
;
// the runtime check showed before ..
// .. the rest of the lib
// the end of our lib
}());
We may eventually decide to use some "
isIE" check via conditional comments on our pages, since the solution costs nothing once minified, and have a normalized de-facto, fast, easier, behavior for every other browser.
Here the inline synchronous re-assignment for latter case:
(function (slice, Timeout, Interval) {
function delegate(callback, $arguments) {
$arguments = slice.call($arguments, 2);
return function () {
callback.apply(null, $arguments);
};
}
setTimeout = function (callback, delay) {
return Timeout(delegate(callback, arguments), delay);
};
setInterval = function (callback, delay) {
return Interval(delegate(callback, arguments), delay);
};
}([].slice, setTimeout, setInterval));
Update ... and As Summary
Of course the lookup is much faster than function creation, and this is the
dedicated test but this post is about the summary of lookup
and the classic closure creation historically used only because of this IE inconsistency.
Less lookup plus less closures around
are faster, and numbers are there ( meaningful with slower devices )
