miebach / periodically

A small erlang library for periodically calling a function

Periodically

A minimal erlang library which allows for periodically calling a function. Built on top of gen_server so it's integratable with supervisor the same as any other gen_server

Usage

The library comes with a Makefile, but it's just a single erl file so you can integrate it however you like. I prefer sticking it in deps/ and running erl with -pa deps/*/ebin/ but it's up to you.

As far as using it in code, there's two methods, periodically:start and periodically:start_link. The difference between them is analogous to gen_server. They take three arguments, a gen_server name (passed straight in as the first argument to gen_server:start(_link)/4), a period in milliseconds, and a function. The function can either be an anonymous function or in the form {Module,Method,Args}.

Example

%Starts a gen_server named thing1, runs the anonymous function every 3 seconds
periodically:start({local,thing1},3000,fun() -> io:fwrite("thing1 says hi!\n") end),

%Starts a gen_server named thing2 (and links it), runs ?MODULE:thing2_test([]) every
%2 seconds
periodically:start_link({local,thing2},2000,{?MODULE,thing2_test,[]}).