blTimerAPI

blTimerAPI is a lightweight timer library based on std::thread that creates timers on parallel threads that fire at specified intervals for a specified amount of time

Dependencies

• c++11
• std::thread

How do I use it?

The blTimer class can be used with any type of function such as a function, a functor, a lambda function, member functions, with any number of arguments

Here's an example code where we feed a functor to our timer, and set the timer period to 1 second (that means it fires every second), set its total duration to 5 seconds (it stops firing after 5 seconds) and set its maximum number of firings to -1 (it means it never stops firing until it runs for "duration" seconds)

// Include the thread
#include<thread>// Include iostream to output to console
#include<iostream>// Include the blTimerAPI library
#include"blTimerAPI/blTimerAPI.hpp"//-------------------------------------------------------------------// A simple worker class//-------------------------------------------------------------------classWorkerClass
{
public:WorkerClass(){}
~WorkerClass(){}
voidworkFunction(int& value)
{
std::cout << "value = " << ++value << std::endl;
}
};
//-------------------------------------------------------------------//-------------------------------------------------------------------// main program function//-------------------------------------------------------------------intmain(int argc, char *argv[])
{
// Create the worker class
WorkerClass myWorker;
// Create the timer and set its// properties
blTimerAPI::blTimer myTimer;
myTimer.setDuration(5); // In seconds
myTimer.setPeriod(1); // In seconds
myTimer.setMaximumNumberOfTimesTheTimerFires(-1); // Negative means no max limit is set// The value variableint myValue = 0;
// Start the timer
myTimer.start(&WorkerClass::workFunction,std::ref(myWorker),std::ref(myValue));
// Wait for the timer to complete//// NOTE: The timer could be stopped at// any point by calling myTimer.stopAndDetach()// or by calling myTimer.stopAndJoin()
myTimer.join();
// Print out the value after the thread// is done showing that the value was// indeed changed
std::cout << "after thread is done, value = " << myValue << "\n\n\n";
// We're donereturn0;
}
//-------------------------------------------------------------------

The output from this program follows:

value = 1
value = 2
value = 3
value = 4
value = 5
after thread is done, value = 5