Lesson 22 — Debounce

Wait until the calls stop

Debounce delays a function until the calls stop for a moment. Each new call cancels the previous timer (clearTimeout) and starts a new one (setTimeout). So if a user types "c", "ca", "cat" quickly, only "cat" triggers the search.

const id = setTimeout(() => console.log("later"), 500);
clearTimeout(id);   // cancelled: nothing is logged

...args passes on all the arguments the call received.

Why it matters: without debounce, a search box sends one request per keystroke.