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python requests post timeout default

Narkw Brahma

Narkw Brahma

• 1 min read

Python Requests Post Timeout Default

If you are working with Python and sending HTTP requests using the popular Requests library, you might want to set a default timeout for your requests. This can be useful to make sure your program doesn't hang indefinitely when a server is slow to respond.

Setting a Default Timeout

You can set a default timeout for all requests by using the timeout parameter of the session object:


import requests

# create a session object
s = requests.Session()

# set the timeout to 5 seconds
s.timeout = 5

# send a POST request
response = s.post('https://example.com', data={'key': 'value'})

In this example, we create a session object and set the timeout property to 5 seconds. Any request sent using this session will have a default timeout of 5 seconds.

Timeout Exceptions

If a request times out, Requests will raise a requests.exceptions.Timeout exception. You can catch this exception and handle it appropriately:


import requests

# create a session object
s = requests.Session()

# set the timeout to 5 seconds
s.timeout = 5

try:
    # send a POST request
    response = s.post('https://example.com', data={'key': 'value'})
    # process the response
except requests.exceptions.Timeout:
    # handle the timeout exception

In this example, we use a try-except block to catch the requests.exceptions.Timeout exception if the request times out. We can then handle the exception as needed.

Other Timeout Options

You can also set a timeout on a per-request basis by passing a timeout parameter to the request method:


import requests

# set the timeout to 5 seconds
timeout = 5

# send a POST request with a timeout of 10 seconds
response = requests.post('https://example.com', data={'key': 'value'}, timeout=10)

In this example, we set the timeout parameter to 10 seconds specifically for this request.

Finally, you can also set a connect timeout and a read timeout separately using the timeout parameter as a tuple:


import requests

# set connect timeout to 5 seconds and read timeout to 10 seconds
timeout = (5, 10)

# send a POST request with the specified timeouts
response = requests.post('https://example.com', data={'key': 'value'}, timeout=timeout)

In this example, we set a connect timeout of 5 seconds and a read timeout of 10 seconds for the request.

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