Stop Using setTimeout for Polling — Here's What to Do Instead
📰 Dev.to · Mack
Learn why setTimeout is not ideal for polling and discover better alternatives to improve your code's efficiency and reliability
Action Steps
- Replace setTimeout with setInterval for more efficient polling
- Use WebSockets for real-time communication and bidirectional data exchange
- Implement long polling using the fetch API and async/await syntax
- Configure a message queue or a job scheduler to handle polling tasks
- Test and compare the performance of different polling methods to choose the best approach
Who Needs to Know This
Developers and engineers who work with APIs and asynchronous programming can benefit from this knowledge to improve their code's performance and scalability
Key Insight
💡 setTimeout is not the best choice for polling due to its limitations and potential performance issues, and there are better alternatives available
Share This
🚫 Ditch setTimeout for polling! 🚀 Discover better alternatives like setInterval, WebSockets, and long polling to improve your code's efficiency and reliability 📈
Full Article
Raise your hand if you've written this: function pollStatus() { fetch('/api/status') ...
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