Loop timer in JavaScript

Note that setTimeout and setInterval are very different functions:

• setTimeout will execute the code once, after the timeout.
• setInterval will execute the code forever, in intervals of the provided timeout.

Both functions return a timer ID which you can use to abort the timeout. All you have to do is store that value in a variable and use it as argument to clearTimeout(tid) or clearInterval(tid) respectively.

So, depending on what you want to do, you have two valid choices:

// set timeout
var tid = setTimeout(mycode, 2000);
function mycode() {
  // do some stuff...
  tid = setTimeout(mycode, 2000); // repeat myself
}
function abortTimer() { // to be called when you want to stop the timer
  clearTimeout(tid);
}

or

// set interval
var tid = setInterval(mycode, 2000);
function mycode() {
  // do some stuff...
  // no need to recall the function (it's an interval, it'll loop forever)
}
function abortTimer() { // to be called when you want to stop the timer
  clearInterval(tid);
}

Both are very common ways of achieving the same.