How to create a sleep/delay in nodejs that is Blocking?

Question

I'm currently trying to learn nodejs and a small project I'm working is writing an API to control some networked LED lights.

The microprocessor controlling the LEDs has a processing delay, and I need to space commands sent to the micro at least 100ms apart. In C# I'm used to just calling Thread.Sleep(time), but I have not found a similar feature in node.

I have found several solutions using the setTimeout(...) function in node, however, this is asynchronous and does not block the thread ( which is what I need in this scenario).

Is anyone aware of a blocking sleep or delay function? Preferably something that does not just spin the CPU, and has an accuracy of +-10 ms?

Answer 1

Node is asynchronous by nature, and that's what's great about it, so you really shouldn't be blocking the thread, but as this seems to be for a project controlling LED's, I'll post a workaraound anyway, even if it's not a very good one and shouldn't be used (seriously).

A while loop will block the thread, so you can create your own sleep function

function sleep(time, callback) {
    var stop = new Date().getTime();
    while(new Date().getTime() < stop + time) {
        ;
    }
    callback();
}

to be used as

sleep(1000, function() {
   // executes after one second, and blocks the thread
});

I think this is the only way to block the thread (in principle), keeping it busy in a loop, as Node doesn't have any blocking functionality built in, as it would sorta defeat the purpose of the async behaviour.