# The DELAY node. Not doing what I want

**URL:** <https://discourse.nodered.org/t/the-delay-node-not-doing-what-i-want/854>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [16 June 2018 06:22 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/the-delay-node-not-doing-what-i-want/854 "2018-06-16T06:22:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 21

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**Author:** ![Trying\_to\_learn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/discourse.nodered.org/trying_to_learn/32/28400_2.png) [@Trying\_to\_learn](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/Trying_to_learn)\
**Post date:** [16 June 2018 22:22 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/the-delay-node-not-doing-what-i-want/854/21 "2018-06-16T22:22:47Z")

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Yes, and again: Thanks for the help.

Ok, to re-cap:  
You did what I did in another case where you sent the value in the payload - given - but tagged the message with the topic. I was mistaken for a long time that it was actually msg.delay which is what the node wants.

But you “cheated” and until the last second it was the topic and you moved the msg.topic -\> msg.delay()

Got it.

I am really wanting to get out of using the old context format, but so many of my nodes have that in them and so when I am stuck and search my records I find a lot of them - rather than the new ones which are a lot smaller in occurrence.

Alas I am not doing a good job of documenting the progress of the nodes as they “grow” and become better. (Work in progress).

Ok, the “default time” part. Yes, ok, if the node has a default value. It is really academic as it shouldn’t really ever be in the state where there is no value set. But to be a good programmer, I probably should put it in there.

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