How to delay the .keyup() handler until the user stops typing?

Question

I’ve got a search field. Right now it searches for every keyup. So if someone types “Windows”, it will make a search with AJAX for every keyup: “W”, “Wi”, “Win”, “Wind”, “Wi

Answer 1

Building upon CMS's answer here's new delay method which preserves 'this' in its usage:

var delay = (function(){
  var timer = 0;
  return function(callback, ms, that){
    clearTimeout (timer);
    timer = setTimeout(callback.bind(that), ms);
  };
})();

Usage:

$('input').keyup(function() {
    delay(function(){
      alert('Time elapsed!');
    }, 1000, this);
});