# Een timer instellen in het verleden lijkt niet te werken, maar dat doet het wel
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/setting-a-timer-in-the-past-seems-to-not-work-but-it-does/168252
**Category:** Bug
**Created:** [26 oktober 2020 om 07:28 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/setting-a-timer-in-the-past-seems-to-not-work-but-it-does/168252 "2020-10-26T07:28:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Nacho\_Caballero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Nacho_Caballero)
#### Post date: [26 oktober 2020 om 07:28 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/setting-a-timer-in-the-past-seems-to-not-work-but-it-does/168252/1 "2020-10-26T07:28:57Z")
I often use the `POST /t/:topic_id/timer` action to change topic categories (from private to public).
This works fine if the `time` parameter is in the future, but if I use the current time (or a past time by mistake), I get a valid response but the category change does not happen instantaneously.
It usually takes 5-10 minutes, which can be confusing (I’m assuming this is due to the frequency of an internal polling loop).
Here is an example request (past time) and response:
```plaintext
# Request
POST /t/4378/timer HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json, */*;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Api-Key: REDACTED
Api-Username: REDACTED
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 96
Content-Type: application/json
Host: REDACTED
User-Agent: HTTPie/2.2.0
{
"category_id": "54",
"status_type": "publish_to_category",
"time": "2020-10-26 08:09:45+01:00"
}
# Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2020 07:09:46 GMT
Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
Server: nginx/1.18.0 (Ubuntu)
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000;
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Vary: Accept-Encoding
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Discourse-Route: topics/timer
X-Discourse-Username: REDACTED
X-Download-Options: noopen
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies: none
X-Request-Id: REDACTED
X-Runtime: 0.055819
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
{
"based_on_last_post": false,
"category_id": 54,
"closed": false,
"duration": null,
"execute_at": "2020-10-26T07:09:45.000Z",
"success": "OK"
}
```
**Update** : I thought this was exclusive to the API, but it can also be a problem in the UI because even though you can’t select a date in the past, you can select a time in the past.
The behavior is the same: no indication that a timer has been set, but it still goes off anywhere between 5-10 minutes after being created.
---
### Author:  [@eviltrout](https://meta.discourse.org/u/eviltrout)
#### Post date: [3 december 2020 om 19:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/setting-a-timer-in-the-past-seems-to-not-work-but-it-does/168252/2 "2020-12-03T19:49:02Z")
This is a bit of an edge case, but I think the server should return an error message if you submit a topic timer with today’s date and a time in the past.
---
### Author:  [@markvanlan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/markvanlan)
#### Post date: [8 december 2020 om 16:16 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/setting-a-timer-in-the-past-seems-to-not-work-but-it-does/168252/5 "2020-12-08T16:16:54Z")
There is in fact a 🐛 in the code that blocks past dating. PR is open:
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/11434](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/11434)
---
### Author:  [@eviltrout](https://meta.discourse.org/u/eviltrout)
#### Post date: [8 december 2020 om 18:48 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/setting-a-timer-in-the-past-seems-to-not-work-but-it-does/168252/6 "2020-12-08T18:48:23Z")