onChange for dropdown and timeouts

I have a dropdown menu which basically sends some data back to the server via onchange. The data is stored in the database and the primary table using seconds to avoid duplicates. What happens is if I scroll the dropdown via my keyboard, for exam开发者_开发技巧ple, using the up/down keys, my script returns an error because there is a duplicate entry now in the database.

here is part of the code for the dropdown in html

onchange="GetmySQLData();"

My question is can i just do a setTimeout and would it be correct to use it in this format:

onchange="setTimeout('GetmySQLData();', 1750);"

If you have a better approach, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks

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The following versions are interchangeable:

1. setTimeout('myFunction()',1750);
2. setTimeout(myFunction,1750)
3. setTimeout(function() { /* some anonymous function */ },1750)

What you might want is

<script>
var tId = ""; // create a global var
</script>

and have
onchange="clearTimeout(tId); tId=setTimeout('GetmySQLData()',1750)"

which will only execute the onchange after the user does not change the dropdown for the duration of the timeout, but if the user changes within the timeout period, a new timeout is triggered

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If you are planning to use the setTimeOut then it has to called in the following way:

onchange="setTimeout(GetmySQLData(), 1750);" providing single quotes aroung the arguments makes it to be treated as a string. and the timeout value is in milliseconds.