AS3: Creating a timer event for delay/sleep

There is no sleep() method in AS3, so one cannot do:

some code;
sleep(); // Delay for x amount of time
some more code;

So one needs to use the timer class to achieve delays and such, which means that if you come from a multi thread background and are accustomed to putting in a sleep(), you would have to rethink your approach.

The timer usage is simple enough:

import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.utils.Timer;

// Create the timer, generate a tick every 500 millisec, Timer ends after 2 seconds.
var new_timer:Timer = new Timer(500, 2);

// function on_tick() will be called every 500 millisec
new_timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, on_tick);
// function timer_complete will be called once the timer expires, 2 secs in this case
new_timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER_COMPLETE, timer_complete);
// Start the timer
new_timer.start();

function on_tick(event:TimerEvent):void {
// some code
}

function timer_complete(event:TimerEvent):void {
// some code
}

Note the parameters, event:TimerEvent in the functions on_tick and timer_complete, those are needed else the implementation will not work.