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python requests post timeout

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 2 min read

Python Requests Post Timeout

As a programmer, we all have come across a situation where we need to make HTTP requests to external APIs to fetch data or perform some action. Python's requests library is one of the most popular libraries used for making HTTP requests in Python. However, sometimes we may encounter a situation where the request takes too much time to complete, and we want to set a timeout for it.

Setting Timeout in Requests

Requests' library provides an easy way to set a timeout for requests using the timeout parameter. This parameter sets the number of seconds to wait for a response from the server before aborting the request. If a response is not received within the specified time, then it raises a Timeout exception.


import requests

try:
    response = requests.post(url, data=json_data, timeout=5)
    # process response
except requests.exceptions.Timeout:
    # handle timeout exception

In the above example, we set a timeout of 5 seconds for the post request. If the server does not respond within 5 seconds, then it raises a Timeout exception.

Handling Timeout Exceptions

When a timeout exception is raised, we should handle it appropriately to prevent our program from crashing. We can catch the exception using a try-except block and handle it accordingly.


try:
    response = requests.post(url, data=json_data, timeout=5)
    # process response
except requests.exceptions.Timeout:
    print("The request timed out. Please try again later.")

Multiple Ways to Set Timeout

There are multiple ways to set a timeout for requests in Python. We can set the timeout using the timeout parameter as we saw earlier. We can also set the timeout globally for all requests by modifying the default_timeout variable of the requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter class.


import requests.adapters

# set global timeout
requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter.default_timeout = 5

In the above example, we set a global timeout of 5 seconds for all requests made using the requests library. This method is useful when we want to apply the same timeout to all requests made in our program.

We can also set a connection timeout and read timeout separately using the connect_timeout and read_timeout parameters, respectively.


# set separate connect and read timeouts
response = requests.post(url, data=json_data, timeout=(3, 5))

In the above example, we set a connect timeout of 3 seconds and a read timeout of 5 seconds for the post request.

Conclusion

Setting a timeout for requests is an important aspect of making HTTP requests in Python. It helps us prevent our program from hanging indefinitely and crashing due to unresponsive servers. Requests' library provides an easy way to set timeouts using various parameters, and we should use them whenever necessary.

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