setTimeout doesn't work as expected

Question

In my application I am loading user posts using the ajax scroll down feature.

The for loop iteration takes too much time, browser freezes until the results are displayed. So I implemented a setTimeout method to fix that, but for some reason the flow doesn't go inside the setTimeout method on debugging.

Also the page is blank, data is not rendered.

  success : function(responseJson) {
        $("#loadingdata").toggle();
        enableScrolling();

        if($.isEmptyObject(responseJson)){
          $("#noMorePosts").toggle();
          disableScrolling();
          paginationComplete=true;
        }

        $.each(responseJson, function (index) {     
          (function(index) {
            setTimeout(function(index) { //the flow doesn't move inside this
              var resp_JSON=responseJson[index];
              var dateObj=resp_JSON.postCreationTime;
              resp_JSON.postCreationTime = moment(dateObj).format("h:mm a, ddd, MMM Do YY");
              var timeago = moment(dateObj).fromNow();
              resp_JSON.timeago = timeago; 
              resp_JSON.username=userName;               
              var post_template = $('#homepostcontainertemplate').html();
              Mustache.parse(post_template);   
              var post_info = Mustache.to_html(post_template, resp_JSON);
              $('#homepublisherpostsdiv').append(post_info);
              $('div').linkify();
            });
          })(index);
        });

When the flow reaches setTimeout the next code it hits is the jquery lib

Am I doing it right or missing something?

Note: I get the responseJson data from the server fine. Without the setTimeout the data is loaded on the page.

Answer 1

setTimeout takes an argument-less function ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowTimers/setTimeout ), so having index as an argument is a little odd. I suspect that index is undefined so responseJson[index] is throwing out of bound exception (as evidenced by console.log(1) showing up as per Niloct's comment). If you change your code to:

    $.each(responseJson, function (index) {     
        setTimeout(function() { // no index in the argument list
          var resp_JSON=responseJson[index];
          var dateObj=resp_JSON.postCreationTime;
          resp_JSON.postCreationTime = moment(dateObj).format("h:mm a, ddd, MMM Do YY");
          var timeago = moment(dateObj).fromNow();
          resp_JSON.timeago = timeago; 
          resp_JSON.username=userName;               
          var post_template = $('#homepostcontainertemplate').html();
          Mustache.parse(post_template);   
          var post_info = Mustache.to_html(post_template, resp_JSON);
          $('#homepublisherpostsdiv').append(post_info);
          $('div').linkify();
        });
    });

I suspect it will work.

(edited to take into account jjaulimsing's comment about not needing the encapsulating function.)