Firstly I am very new to javascript. I have a Shopify store and I am planning to have a countdown timer just like Amazon to each of my product pages. I know there are a lot of plugins I can use for Shopify but none of them matches with the theme and style of my Shopify store so I planned to make one myself.
What I want is if User-1 opens my website and navigates to a product page, he should see a timer counting down to a specific time say 12:00:00
(hh:mm:ss). Suppose User-1 sees ‘Deal ends in 11:20:10
‘ Now if User-2 opens the same product page at the same time then he should also see ‘Deal ends in 11:20:10
‘ The whole point is the timer should not refresh back to 12:00:00
every time the browser loads/reloads the page and every user on the website should see the same time remaining on the countdown timer.
I starting with a bit of research and managed to run a timer on my store. It’s not exactly what I want but here’s the code:
var interval;
var minutes = 1;
var seconds = 5;
window.onload = function() {
countdown('countdown');
}
function countdown(element) {
interval = setInterval(function() {
var el = document.getElementById(element);
if(seconds == 0) {
if(minutes == 0) {
el.innerHTML = "countdown's over!";
clearInterval(interval);
return;
} else {
minutes--;
seconds = 60;
}
}
if(minutes > 0) {
var minute_text = minutes + (minutes > 1 ? ' minutes' : ' minute');
} else {
var minute_text = '';
}
var second_text = seconds > 1 ? 'seconds' : 'second';
el.innerHTML = minute_text + ' ' + seconds + ' ' + second_text + ' remaining';
seconds--;
}, 1000);
}
</script>
And here’s what it looks like:
It does work but has the following problems:
- It refreshes with the browser refresh.
- It doesn’t have hours.
- It does not auto-repeat when the timer reaches zero.
- For every user time remaining varies.
As I mentioned I am almost a noob in JavaScript. Can anyone help me build a countdown timer that overcomes the above issues?
2
Answers
I am not sure how Shopify handles plugins, but there must be some way to edit CSS for them, so you could have them match the style of your theme.
What you’ve done here, in the JS you’ve provided, will always have that behavior because it is client-side code. The script will run after each refresh, and will always refresh the values
minutes
andseconds
to the associated initial values namely1
and5
. I believe this answers your first question.As per your second question, you clearly have not coded
hours
in that JS script. Sohours
should not appear, it would be a mystery if they did!With respect to your third question, you only call
countdown
once during theonload
function.And by the first answer, it is natural that the clock should not be synchronized among users since they would logically be refreshing your page at different times.
So I think your best bet is to use one of the plugins and just modify the CSS.
Explanation
Problem 1: It refreshes with the browser refresh.
Cause: Because you hardcoded the seconds and minutes (
var seconds = 5
,var minutes = 1
), every user that visits the page will see the timer counting down from the exact same value being "1 minute and 5 seconds remaining" again and again.Solution: Instead of hardcoding the start value of the countdown, hardcode the deadline. So instead of saying to each visitor of your page "Start counting down from 1 min and 5 sec to 0!", you have to say something like "Count down from whatever time it is now to midnight!". This way, the countdown will always be synced across different users of your website (assuming that their computer clock is set correctly).
Problem 2: It doesn’t have hours.
Cause: Your code has only variables to keep track of seconds and minutes, there is no code written to keep track of the hours.
Solution: Like proposed in the solution for problem 1: don’t keep track of the hours/minutes/seconds remaining, but only keep track of the deadline and then calculate hours/minutes/seconds remaining based on the current client time.
Problem 3: It does not auto-repeat when the timer reaches zero.
Cause: The nested
if
s (that checkseconds == 0
andm == 0
) in your code explicitly state to display the text "countdown’s over!" when the countdown is over.Solution: Keep a conditional that checks when the countdown is over but instead of displaying "countdown’s over!", reset the deadline to a next deadline.
Problem 4: For every user time remaining varies.
Cause: See Problem 1
Solution: See Problem 1
Sample code
here is a piece of code that integrates the solutions mentioned above:
Edit: make sure the client time is correct
If you don’t trust your clients for having their time set up correctly. You can also send a correct timestamp from the server that serves your page. Since I don’t know what kind of server you are using I can’t give an example for your server code. But basically you need to replace the code (from the following example) after
const trustedTimestamp =
(being(new Date).getTime()
) with a correct timestamp that you generate on the server. For the correct formatting of this timestamp refer toDate.prototype.getTime()
Time from google server
To create a working example I added this experiment where I get the correct time from a Google page. Do not use this code on your website because it is not guaranteed that google will keep hosting this web-page forever.