Python Requests Library Default Timeout
As a web developer, I have extensively used the Python Requests Library for making HTTP requests. One of the important features of this library is its ability to set timeouts for requests. A timeout is the maximum amount of time a request waits for a response from the server. If the server does not respond within the specified time, the request is considered failed.
Setting a Default Timeout
The Requests library allows us to set a default timeout for all requests made using the library. This is useful when we want to avoid setting a timeout for each request separately. We can set the default timeout by passing a timeout parameter to the session object:
import requests
session = requests.Session()
session.timeout = 5 # 5 seconds
response = session.get('https://www.example.com')
In this example, we are creating a session object and setting the timeout to 5 seconds. Now, all requests made using this session object will have a default timeout of 5 seconds. We are then making a GET request to 'https://www.example.com' using this session object.
Overriding Default Timeout
Sometimes, we may want to set a different timeout for a specific request than the default timeout. In such cases, we can pass a timeout parameter to the request method:
import requests
session = requests.Session()
session.timeout = 5 # 5 seconds
response = session.get('https://www.example.com', timeout=10)
In this example, we are making a GET request to 'https://www.example.com' with a timeout of 10 seconds, which overrides the default timeout of 5 seconds set for the session object.
Conclusion
The Requests library provides a simple way to set timeouts for requests. We can set a default timeout for all requests made using a session object, and also override the default timeout for specific requests by passing a timeout parameter to the request method.