timer

Easy timers in Lua. Spiritual successor to kikito's cron.lua

Public domain! Who needs an IP anyhow?

Usage

Can be mostly used as a drop-in replacement for kikito's cron.lua, but that misses the biggest benefit, which is the timer library itself managing timers, including discarding expired timers:

timer.after(deadline, function, ...) -- runs once after time
timer.every(interval, function, ...) -- runs repeatedly, every time

timer.update(delta)              -- increment, run functions, discard expired..

Functions are completely optional, so you can use the mechanism to track time rather than execute functions. timer:get_run_time() returns the amount of time since the last interval. (Note: This is only useful for repeating timers. One-run timers will only count to their deadline once, unless manually run.)

A timer can be excluded from timer.update, in which case it must be manually updated:

local my_timer = timer.every(interval, function, ...)
my_timer:set_manual(true)

my_timer:update(delta)

timer.update returns a table of expired timers. Example:

local my_timer = timer.after(deadline, function, ...)

local expired = timer.update(delta)
if expired[my_timer] then
  -- idk, whatever you needed
end

Timers can have their run time set to a new value with my_timer:reset(time). If nothing is passed, they will be set to 0.

• One-run timers can have their deadline changed with my_timer:set_deadline(time).
• Repeating timers can have their interval changed with my_timer:set_interval(time).
• You can get deadlines/intervals with my_timer:get_deadline() / my_timer:get_interval().

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Incompatibilities / Changes from kikito's cron.lua:

• There are no checks or restrictions on what can be set.
• If a one-run timer is run by timer.update, it will no longer be updated by timer.update, even if reset.

Releases

GitHub unpublishes my releases frequently, check tags to find them!

Ideas / Tasks

• Make an import/export format and add save/load functions - resumable timers.
  • Make it possible to save/load with a unix timestamp. (Dangerous.)
• Make an access function get_run_time
• Make functions optional