[Python-Dev] I vote to reject: Adding timeout to socket.pyand httplib.py. (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Wed Mar 21 18:58:48 CET 2007

On 3/21/07, Facundo Batista <facundo at taniquetil.com.ar> wrote:

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> (like httplib before the patch), I am personally in favor of going > back to defaulting timeout to None and skipping the settimeout() call > in createconnection() if timeout is None. IMO the use case where > there is a global timeout set and one library wants to override it > with "no timeout" is pretty theoretical, and can just as well be > handled by passing sys.maxint as the timeout. In the new version of the patch (I updated it a few minutes ago), in createconnection() I handle timeout being mandatory with **kwargs. And in HTTPConnection, I handle the posibility of calling it with timeout=None through a sentinel. It works, but my only issue is that it gets ugly in the help(): >>> sentinel = object() >>> def f(a, b=sentinel): ... pass ... >>> help(f) ... f(a, b=<object object at 0xb7d64460>) I know I can use a class with str instead of object, but what would one print in that case? In this case, "optional" does not means a value by default...

This is why I proposed to get rid of the distinction between timeout=None and timeout not specified. Let an unspecified timeout default to None, and if timeout is None, skip the settimeout() call.

I don't have very strong feelings about how to use the function. I just need a timeout to HTTPConnection, to finally have it in urllib2.urlopen().

Yes, I remember well how it all started with a two-line patch to httplib.py :-)

Maybe we can settle all this by just putting timeout= and blocking= in createconnection, HTTPConnection, and urlopen(). This way, the signature would be:

createconnection(address, timeout=None, blocking=None) and the behaviour: if timeout is None: if blocking is None: pass elif blocking: sock.setblocking(True) else: sock.setblocking(False) else: if blocking is None or blocking is False: sock.settimeout(timeout) else: raise TypeError("You can not block a socket and also time it out") This way we get off from the "timeout in None means something about blocking" trap. What do you think?

Overkill. The socket method settimeout() handles all with a single parameter.

Thanks everybody for the patience...

Especially you, for volunteering to do this and then getting more feedback than you bargained for!!

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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