Using setInterval() to do simplistic continuous polling

Question

For a simple webapp that needs to refresh parts of data presented to the user in set intervals, are there any downsides to just using setInterval() to get a JSON from an end

Answer 1

A simple non-blocking poll function can be implemented in recent browsers using Promises:

var sleep = time => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, time))
var poll = (promiseFn, time) => promiseFn().then(
             sleep(time).then(() => poll(promiseFn, time)))

// Greet the World every second
poll(() => new Promise(() => console.log('Hello World!')), 1000)