pause Timer with ExtendedTimer in ActionScript 3.0

hey guys, last week i needed to pause several timers and resume them later on. i ran into a problem which i try to explain in an little example.

so let’s say you start a Timer with 1000 milliseconds delay and stop it after 600 milliseconds. if you call Timer.start() again, it starts with a new delay of 1000 milliseconds again. there is no built-in possibility to resume the timer for the remaining 400 milliseconds. i thought “nothing easier than that, just call Timer.pause()”. but there was no such method, so i decided to write my own ExtendedTimer class and add the pause functionality. now i like to share it with you…

> ExtendedTimer.as

package com.fjakobs.utils
{
	import flash.events.TimerEvent;
	import flash.utils.Timer;

	/**
	 * @author fjakobs
	 */
	public class ExtendedTimer extends Timer
	{
		private var _startTime : Number;
		private var _initialDelay : Number;
		private var _paused : Boolean = false;

		public function ExtendedTimer(delay : Number,
									  repeatCount : int = 0)
		{
			super(delay, repeatCount);
			_initialDelay = delay;
			addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER,
						    onTimer,false,0,true);
		}

		private function onTimer(event : TimerEvent) : void
		{
			_startTime = new Date().time;
			delay = _initialDelay;
		}

		override public function start() : void
		{
			if(currentCount < repeatCount)
			{
				_paused = false;
				_startTime = new Date().time;
				super.start();
			}
		}

		public function pause() : void
		{
			if(running)
			{
				_paused = true;
				stop();
				delay = delay - (new Date().time - _startTime);
			}
		}

		public function get paused() : Boolean
		{
			return _paused;
		}

		public function get initialDelay() : Number
		{
			return _initialDelay;
		}
	}
}