I needed to poll the server for another project we’re working on (to be announced soon). I started off using the PeriodicalUpdater from enfranchised mind, but I ran into some limitations that were problematic enough that I implemented a new version from scratch.

The problem that made me re-implement was that I was polling for new posts, and if the user made a new post I wanted the wait between poll attempts to go back to the minimum.

The main improvements of this version over the enfranchised mind version are:

• Multiple active polls
• Ability to modify the ajax settings after the poll has started
• Can make a one-time change to the current polling interval.

You can download or contribute from the project page.

Usage:

//All poll options are optional.
var pollopts = {
  //A random name will be assigned if you don't assign one
  name: 'name-of-poll',
  //minimum wait between calls in msec
  min_wait: 6000, // default: 1000
  //maximum wait between calls in msec
  max_wait: 12000, // default: 30000
  // amount to multiply the wait by if the data is unchanged.
  wait_multiplier: 4, // default: 2
  // log poll events to console.log
  doLog: false, // default true
  // A function that overrides the default calculation
  // for how to change the wait if nothing has changed.
  // Should return an integer
  adjustWait: function(xhr, textStatus, current_wait) { ... }, .
};
// simplest way to start polling.
// ajaxopts are defined as per
// http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax/jQuery.ajax#toptions
var mypoll = $.poll(ajaxopts);
// start polling with custom poll options
var mypoll = $.poll(ajaxopts,pollopts);
// get a poll object, but don't start polling
var mypoll = $.poll(ajaxopts,pollopts,true);
// can also do $.poll(ajaxopts,null,true);
// stop the poll
mypoll.stop = true;
// make a one-time change to the poll wait interval
mypoll.setWait(500);
// change the ajax options for the live poll
mypoll.setAjaxOptions(ajaxopts);