HTTP Get Request with Timeout

· 260 words · 2 minutes read
#get #http #timeout #socket #error #download #request #client #cancelled

We’ve already covered how to download a file, but this post covers it a little further by specifying the maximum time attempted on the request. Adding timeouts are often important to stop your program coming to a halt.

To do this we make our own http client, giving it our custom timeout value. We can then use this client to make our requests. If a timeout is reached, the Get() function will return with an error. Our code is set to a very short timeout of 5 milliseconds to demo the error, but this can be set to any duration you need.

Illustrating the Error

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package main

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

func main() {

	client := http.Client{
		Timeout: 5 * time.Millisecond,
	}

	// Will throw error as it's not quick enough
	_, err := client.Get("/robots.txt")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

error thrown from request with short timeout

Successful Example

For the successful example we change the timeout to 10 seconds, which gives it enough time to connect and get a response.

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package main

import (
	"io/ioutil"
	"net/http"
	"log"
	"time"
)

func main() {

	client := http.Client{
		Timeout: 10 * time.Second,
	}

	resp, err := client.Get("/robots.txt")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	html, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	log.Println(string(html))
}

successful get request with timeout

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Author:  Edd Turtle

Edd is the Lead Developer at Hoowla, a prop-tech startup, where he spends much of his time working on production-ready Go and PHP code. He loves coding, but also enjoys cycling and camping in his spare time.

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