Cancel a timed event in Swift?

Question

I want to run a block of code in 10 seconds from an event, but I want to be able to cancel it so that if something happens before those 10 seconds, the code won\'t run after

Answer 1

Try this (Swift 2.x, see David's answer below for Swift 3):

typealias dispatch_cancelable_closure = (cancel : Bool) -> ()

func delay(time:NSTimeInterval, closure:()->()) ->  dispatch_cancelable_closure? {

    func dispatch_later(clsr:()->()) {
        dispatch_after(
            dispatch_time(
                DISPATCH_TIME_NOW,
                Int64(time * Double(NSEC_PER_SEC))
            ),
            dispatch_get_main_queue(), clsr)
    }

    var closure:dispatch_block_t? = closure
    var cancelableClosure:dispatch_cancelable_closure?

    let delayedClosure:dispatch_cancelable_closure = { cancel in
        if let clsr = closure {
            if (cancel == false) {
                dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), clsr);
            }
        }
        closure = nil
        cancelableClosure = nil
    }

    cancelableClosure = delayedClosure

    dispatch_later {
        if let delayedClosure = cancelableClosure {
            delayedClosure(cancel: false)
        }
    }

    return cancelableClosure;
}

func cancel_delay(closure:dispatch_cancelable_closure?) {
    if closure != nil {
        closure!(cancel: true)
    }
}

// usage
let retVal = delay(2.0) {
    println("Later")
}
delay(1.0) {
    cancel_delay(retVal)
}

From Waam's comment here: dispatch_after - GCD in swift?