Storing the return value of node.js setTimeout in redis

Question

I\'m using setTimeout in Node.js and it seems to behave differently from client-side setTimeout in that it returns an object instead of a number. I wan

Answer 1

You cannot store the object in Redis. The setTimeout method returns a Handler (object reference).

One idea would be to create your own associative array in memory, and store the index in Redis. For example:

var nextTimerIndex = 0;
var timerMap = {};

var timer = setTimeout(function(timerIndex) {
    console.log('Ding!');

    // Free timer reference!
    delete timerMap[timerIndex];
}, 5 * 1000, nextTimerIndex);

// Store index in Redis...

// Then, store the timer object for later reference
timerMap[nextTimerIndex++] = timer;

// ...
// To clear the timeout
clearTimeout(timerMap[myTimerIndex]);