Handling Timeout error

Question

After using timeout:

 status = Timeout::timeout(5) {
  # Something that should be interrupted if it takes too much time...
}

I got this Timeout error:

/Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:644:in `initialize': execution expired (Timeout::Error)
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:644:in `open'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:644:in `block in connect'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/timeout.rb:44:in `timeout'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/timeout.rb:87:in `timeout'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:644:in `connect'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:637:in `do_start'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:632:in `start'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p136/gems/mechanize-1.0.0/lib/mechanize.rb:527:in `fetch_page'
    from /Users/galharth/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p136/gems/mechanize-1.0.0/lib/mechanize.rb:259:in `get'

What should I do?

Answer 1

Well, that's expected behaviour of Timeout. If the block takes too long, its execution gets terminated and an exception thrown.

You would probably like to catch the exception and handle it appropriately:

require 'timeout'
begin
  status = Timeout::timeout(5) {
    # Something that should be interrupted if it takes too much time...
  }
rescue Timeout::Error
  puts 'That took too long, exiting...'
end