Just yesterday I implemented Python’s sleep function in order for my code to work. I needed to make an HTTP request to Facebook’s API. They immediately returned a response but continued processing in the background. Their processing took a few extra milliseconds, and I needed them to finish before I continued. A 1-second delay was the difference between the code working perfectly and not working at all. Here’s how it’s done!
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- 1 ea python
1Import the time module
We will first want to import Python’s time module: import time This module ships with Python so it should be available on any system. Although it is not necessary for this guide, I highly recommend getting familiar with the time module. Read more about the time module here.
2Use time.sleep to set the delay
You can set a delay in your Python script by passing the number of seconds you want to delay to the sleep function: time.sleep(5) This means you want the script to delay 5 seconds before continuing. The sleep function also accepts floats if you want to give a more precise number: time.sleep(1.75) This will sleep for 1 second and 750 milliseconds. You can also use a float to delay for less than a second like this: time.sleep(0.5) This will sleep for half of a second. You can and should read more about Python’s sleep function here.
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- 1 ea python