How would I go about using window.find() activate on that text only once

Question

I use hack.chat a bit, and I saw that they have a bot, but the bot program wasn't working for me so I decided to make my own.

var finderBinder;
var searchFor = function(command){
    finderBinder = window.find(command, true, true);
    if(finderBinder){
        if(command === "/hello"){
            ws.send(JSON.stringify({cmd: "chat", text: "hello!"}));
        }
        else if(command === "/cry"){
            ws.send(JSON.stringify({cmd: "chat", text: "wah waha wahhh"}));
        }
        else
        {
            console.log("it was found but it was not a command.")
        }
    }
    else
    {
        console.log("Did not find the command");
    }
}

var loopdeloop = 0;

while(loopdeloop === 0){
    searchFor("/hello");
    searchFor("/cry");
}

Now, the first part works if I just run that by itself on the page, and enter searchFor("/hello"); that would work, but if I wanted it to just automatically do that whenever a message popped up, I attempted the loop,(In a empty chatroom so it wouldn't spam a used room if it did) and it crashed my browser. I know why it did that. because it just checked forever, and it saw it forever so it kept on trying to do the code forever..

But how would I make it only run the searchFor when a new text showed up so it would run the text in it and if it was a command it would do the command? Or is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

The simplest way to stop your function from looping to infinity (and beyond!) would be to call it once every X seconds/minutes/hours/lightyears.

Using setInterval(searchFor, 1000); where the second parameter is the time interval in milliseconds.

To pass a parameter to your searchFor function, you must create an anonymous function so it doesn't get called right away.

setInterval( function() { searchFor ("/hello"); }, 1000 );

This will call your function every ~1 second, although keep in mind there is some overhead to javascript and there will be a slight delay. Also be careful of looping your function too often, as it will be expensive, and browsers have a built in delay, for example, you will not be able to setInterval to 2 ms and have it function normally cross browser.

Edit: The more elegant solution of binding an event to a change in the textbox is also possible, depending on how the page is setup and your access to it, hard to answer without that structure known.