timeout – Universal Timeouts

class eventlet.timeout.Timeout

Raises exception in the current greenthread after timeout seconds:

timeout = Timeout(seconds, exception)
try:
    ... # execution here is limited by timeout
finally:
    timeout.cancel()

When exception is omitted or is None, the Timeout instance itself is raised:

>>> Timeout(0.1)
>>> eventlet.sleep(0.2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
 ...
Timeout: 0.1 seconds

You can use the with statement for additional convenience:

with Timeout(seconds, exception) as timeout:
    pass # ... code block ...

This is equivalent to the try/finally block in the first example.

There is an additional feature when using the with statement: if exception is False, the timeout is still raised, but the with statement suppresses it, so the code outside the with-block won’t see it:

data = None
with Timeout(5, False):
    data = mysock.makefile().readline()
if data is None:
    ... # 5 seconds passed without reading a line
else:
    ... # a line was read within 5 seconds

As a very special case, if seconds is None, the timer is not scheduled, and is only useful if you’re planning to raise it directly.

There are two Timeout caveats to be aware of:

• If the code block in the try/finally or with-block never cooperatively yields, the timeout cannot be raised. In Eventlet, this should rarely be a problem, but be aware that you cannot time out CPU-only operations with this class.

• If the code block catches and doesn’t re-raise BaseException (for example, with except:), then it will catch the Timeout exception, and might not abort as intended.

When catching timeouts, keep in mind that the one you catch may not be the one you set; if you plan on silencing a timeout, always check that it’s the same instance that you set:

timeout = Timeout(1)
try:
    ...
except Timeout as t:
    if t is not timeout:
        raise # not my timeout

Timeout.cancel()

If the timeout is pending, cancel it. If not using Timeouts in with statements, always call cancel() in a finally after the block of code that is getting timed out. If not canceled, the timeout will be raised later on, in some unexpected section of the application.

Timeout.pending

True if the timeout is scheduled to be raised.

eventlet.timeout.with_timeout(seconds, function, *args, **kwds)

Wrap a call to some (yielding) function with a timeout; if the called function fails to return before the timeout, cancel it and return a flag value.

Parameters:

• seconds (int or float) – seconds before timeout occurs

• func – the callable to execute with a timeout; it must cooperatively yield, or else the timeout will not be able to trigger

• *args – positional arguments to pass to func

• **kwds – keyword arguments to pass to func

• timeout_value – value to return if timeout occurs (by default raises Timeout)

Return type:

Value returned by func if func returns before seconds, else timeout_value if provided, else raises Timeout.

Raises:

Timeout – if func times out and no timeout_value has been provided.

Exception:

Any exception raised by func

Example:

data = with_timeout(30, urllib2.open, 'http://www.google.com/', timeout_value="")

Here data is either the result of the get() call, or the empty string if it took too long to return. Any exception raised by the get() call is passed through to the caller.