pymd
pymd

Reputation: 4411

How to set timeout for http.Get() requests in Golang?

I'm making a URL fetcher in Go and have a list of URLs to fetch. I send http.Get() requests to each URL and obtain their response.

resp,fetch_err := http.Get(url)

How can I set a custom timeout for each Get request? (The default time is very long and that makes my fetcher really slow.) I want my fetcher to have a timeout of around 40-45 seconds after which it should return "request timed out" and move on to the next URL.

How can I achieve this?

Upvotes: 187

Views: 208451

Answers (7)

zangw
zangw

Reputation: 48566

There are several client-side timeouts in the Go http module, and there are some samples of those timeouts on current answers.

Here is one image to illustrate the client-side timeout refer to The complete guide to Go net/http timeouts

enter image description here

There are two methods to set the timeout for HTTP request

  • http.Client
client := http.Client{
    Timeout: 3 * time.Second,
}
resp, err := client.Do(req)
  • Context
ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 3*time.Second)
defer cancel()
req, err := http.NewRequestWithContext(ctx, http.MethodGet, URL)

The difference between them is

  • Using context is request specific while using the Client timeout might be applied to all request pass to Do method client has.
  • If you want to specialize your deadline/timeout to each request then use context, otherwise, if you want 1 timeout for every outbound request then using client timeout is enough.

Upvotes: 36

Chad Grant
Chad Grant

Reputation: 45422

If you want to do it per request, err handling ignored for brevity:

ctx, cncl := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), time.Second*3)
defer cncl()

req, _ := http.NewRequestWithContext(ctx, http.MethodGet, "https://google.com", nil)

resp, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)

Upvotes: 58

sparrovv
sparrovv

Reputation: 7824

Apparently in Go 1.3 http.Client has Timeout field

client := http.Client{
    Timeout: 5 * time.Second,
}
client.Get(url)

That's done the trick for me.

Upvotes: 398

NoDataScientist
NoDataScientist

Reputation: 11

timeout := time.Duration(5 * time.Second)
transport := &http.Transport{Proxy: http.ProxyURL(proxyUrl), ResponseHeaderTimeout:timeout}

This may help, but notice that ResponseHeaderTimeout starts only after the connection is established.

Upvotes: 0

dmichael
dmichael

Reputation: 648

To add to Volker's answer, if you would also like to set the read/write timeout in addition to the connect timeout you can do something like the following

package httpclient

import (
    "net"
    "net/http"
    "time"
)

func TimeoutDialer(cTimeout time.Duration, rwTimeout time.Duration) func(net, addr string) (c net.Conn, err error) {
    return func(netw, addr string) (net.Conn, error) {
        conn, err := net.DialTimeout(netw, addr, cTimeout)
        if err != nil {
            return nil, err
        }
        conn.SetDeadline(time.Now().Add(rwTimeout))
        return conn, nil
    }
}

func NewTimeoutClient(connectTimeout time.Duration, readWriteTimeout time.Duration) *http.Client {

    return &http.Client{
        Transport: &http.Transport{
            Dial: TimeoutDialer(connectTimeout, readWriteTimeout),
        },
    }
}

This code is tested and is working in production. The full gist with tests is available here https://gist.github.com/dmichael/5710968

Be aware that you will need to create a new client for each request because of the conn.SetDeadline which references a point in the future from time.Now()

Upvotes: 36

Volker
Volker

Reputation: 42486

You need to set up your own Client with your own Transport which uses a custom Dial function which wraps around DialTimeout.

Something like (completely untested) this:

var timeout = time.Duration(2 * time.Second)

func dialTimeout(network, addr string) (net.Conn, error) {
    return net.DialTimeout(network, addr, timeout)
}

func main() {
    transport := http.Transport{
        Dial: dialTimeout,
    }

    client := http.Client{
        Transport: &transport,
    }

    resp, err := client.Get("http://some.url")
}

Upvotes: 59

zzzz
zzzz

Reputation: 91439

A quick and dirty way:

http.DefaultTransport.(*http.Transport).ResponseHeaderTimeout = time.Second * 45

This is mutating global state w/o any coordination. Yet it might be possibly okay for your url fetcher. Otherwise create a private instance of http.RoundTripper:

var myTransport http.RoundTripper = &http.Transport{
        Proxy:                 http.ProxyFromEnvironment,
        ResponseHeaderTimeout: time.Second * 45,
}

var myClient = &http.Client{Transport: myTransport}

resp, err := myClient.Get(url)
...

Nothing above was tested.

Upvotes: 12

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