I want to program a delay in the .click(function() {...}) handler before the function is executed. This doesn't work:

$('.okButton').click(setTimeout(function() { ...}, 3000))

It gives this error (in Chrome):

Uncaught TypeError: Object 2 has no method 'apply'

The JQuery docs don't give any clue as to why this doesn't work.

How can I put a delay before executing the function handler?

I want to program a delay in the .click(function() {...}) handler before the function is executed. This doesn't work:

$('.okButton').click(setTimeout(function() { ...}, 3000))

It gives this error (in Chrome):

Uncaught TypeError: Object 2 has no method 'apply'

The JQuery docs don't give any clue as to why this doesn't work.

How can I put a delay before executing the function handler?

• javascript
• jquery

4 Answers 4

It doesn't work because setTimeout() doesn't return a function; it returns a timer handle (a number).

This should work:

$('.okButton').click(function() { setTimeout(function() { ...}, 3000); });

The argument expressions in JavaScript function calls are always fully evaluated before the function is called. Your code called setTimeout(), and the return value from that was passed into the jQuery routine.

The solution is to have a .click() handler function that just calls setTimeout() with a handle to the real handler function:

  $('.okButton').click(function() {
        setTimeout(okButtonClickHandler, 3000)
  });

When I tried this before it called the handler function immediately because I include parenthesis on the argument to setTimeout().

Don't do this:

  $('.okButton').click(function() {
        setTimeout(okButtonClickHandler(), 3000)
  });

It will execute the handler function immediately.

Why don't you put the timeout inside the callback?

$('.okButton').click(function() {

  setTimeout(function(){
    alert("Hello");
  },3000);

});

You can do something like:

$(".okbutton").click(function(event) {
    var timeout = setTimeout(function() {
        alert("Foo");
    }, 3000)
});

You can try out the working example. After clicking the word click it takes three seconds for the alert to appear.