I have a large form on my website that I want to be able to autosave to a database as the user is filling it out. Almost identical to how google drive works when typing a document.

I am trying not to have a function that runs every X seconds but rather a function that runs when the user has taken a break in typing. So, if the user has not typed in 1 hour but is still on the page, it doesn't keep pushing save requests.

This is all I have so far which is a basic javascript form submit.

$(#page1Form).submit(function(event){

  event.preventDefault();  

  $changesSaved.text(Saving...);

  var url = /backend/forms/page1-POST.php;

        $.ajax({

         type: POST,

         url: url,

         data: $(#page1Form).serialize(),

         success: function(data) { $changesSaved.text(data); }

        });

  return false;

  });