Ticker

Creates regular ticks with a given interval and lets MobX react to them. It is useful for timers, simple animations, periodic UI refreshes, and any logic that needs a "run every N milliseconds" pattern.

When to use

• When you need to refresh data in the UI on a schedule.
• When you want a simple tick counter without repeating timer logic in many places.
• When you need to start and stop periodic updates manually.

What it can do

• Start and stop ticking.
• Store the number of elapsed ticks.
• Change the update interval.

Constructor parameters

• ticksPer — Time between ticks in milliseconds.
• abortSignal — Stops internal reactions when the related lifecycle is aborted.

Public properties

• ticks — Number of ticks since the last reset.
• ticksPer — Current tick interval in milliseconds.
• isRunning — Shows whether the ticker is currently active.

Public methods

• start() — Starts ticking from zero.
• stop() — Stops ticking.
• reset() — Stops ticking and resets the counter.
• destroy() — Fully cleans up the ticker.

Usage example

import { createTicker } from "mobx-swiss-knife";

const ticker = createTicker({
  ticksPer: 1000,
});

ticker.start();

setTimeout(() => {
  console.log(ticker.ticks);
  ticker.stop();
}, 5000);