How to declare a timeout using urllib2 on Google App Engine?

Question

I'm aware that urllib2 is available on Google App Engine as a wrapper of Urlfetch and, as you know, Universal Feedparser uses urllib2.

Do you know any method to set a timeout on urllib2?
Is the timeout parameter on urllib2 been ported on Google App Engine version?

I'm not interested in method like:

rssurldata = urlfetch(rssurl, deadline=..)
feedparser.parse(rssurldata)

Answer 1

There's no simple way to do this, as the wrapper doesn't provide a way to pass through the timeout value, to the best of my knowledge. One hackish option would be to monkeypatch the urlfetch API:

old_fetch = urlfetch.fetch
def new_fetch(url, payload=None, method=GET, headers={},
          allow_truncated=False, follow_redirects=True,
          deadline=10.0, *args, **kwargs):
  return old_fetch(url, payload, method, headers, allow_truncated,
                   follow_redirects, deadline, *args, **kwargs)
urlfetch.fetch = new_fetch

Answer 2

I prefer this. It's more dynamic for GAE API updates.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from google.appengine.api import urlfetch

import settings


def fetch(*args, **kwargs):
    """
    Base fetch func with default deadline settings
    """
    fetch_kwargs = {
        'deadline': settings.URL_FETCH_DEADLINE
    }
    fetch_kwargs.update(kwargs)
    return urlfetch.fetch(
        *args, **fetch_kwargs
    )