How to Automatically Start and Stop the Timer#

Instead of manually starting and stopping the Timer with timer.start() and timer.stop(), it's recommend to use the context manager and with Timer(): statements.

Advantages#

Apart from less code and more readable code, the built-in context manager automatically closes the Timer (so you don't forget it) when the task is done or if an error occurs.

As an added benefit, the with statement prevents you from having loose ends lingering in the Python runtime.

Examples#

With Context Manager#

It's recommended to do this:

1
2
3
4

from timer import Timer

with Timer():
    # Insert your code here

Without Context Manager#

And not recommended to do this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

from timer import Timer

timer = Timer()
timer.start()

# Insert your code here

timer.stop()

Multiple Threads and Decimals#

It's possible nest multiple instances of context. Simply remember to add a unique thread parameter to each instance of Timer().

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12

from timer import Timer

with Timer(thread="A")
    # Insert your code here

    with Timer(thread="B", decimals=5):
        # Insert more code here

    with Timer(thread="C", decimals=3):
        # Insert even more code here

    # Insert even more code here for thread A

How it appears in the terminal:

% Elapsed time: 0.12345 seconds for thread B
% Elapsed time: 0.123 seconds for thread C
% Elapsed time: 1.23 seconds for thread A

Learn more about decimals and threads.

Flow Diagram#

How the Timer starts and stops different threads:

with Timer(thread="A"): >----------------------|
    # Insert your code here                    |
                                               |
    with Timer(thread="B", decimals=5): >--|   |
        # Insert more code here            |   |
        |<---------------------------------|   |
                                               |
    with Timer(thread="C", decimals=3): >--|   |
        # Insert even more code here       |   |
        |<---------------------------------|   |
                                               |
    # Insert even more code here for thread A  |                                               |
    |<-----------------------------------------|