What's the most appropriate way to detect when a user is idle or not using a textual app?

[dontascii]

Hi,
I have an app which has a worker. I would like that worker to stop when a user is idle for a period of time or if they minimize the terminal window/switch to a different application. (and maybe start the worker back up when they return to the app. But lets focus on stopping the worker for now)

I can handle the minimize window/switch application case with 'Blur' (and/or AppBlur) but I'm not sure about detecting idle state. (no mouse or keyboard events) for a period of time. I know the message pump has a check_idle but the docs indicate that will generate an idle event. The docs also say that the idle event is a pseudo event which doesn't go through the message queue.

So, I'm thinking I would need to implement a global on_event handler and record the timestamp when each event arrives. Then I could compare that with the current timestamp and if the period of time I want has passed, then stop the worker. If I'm not mistaken, a timer could be used for the date comparison as it does not generate any events. (Like a worker would do)

Before I continue down this path however, I wanted to see if there is already a solution that works well for my needs and get any insight from all of you smart folk on how to implement this.

Thanks in advance!

[willmcgugan]

I think you are on the right track, but I think it will be simpler that what you have in mind. Implement on_mount, and start or reset a timer on an inout event, for whatever period you would consider idle.

[dontascii]

Thanks Will. You were right. I was missing the fact that a timer can be reset with reset(), which made this a lot easier than what I was originally thinking. The timer just stops the worker after 5 min and the mouse / input events reset the timer. Elegant and simple.
Thanks for your help.