I'm trying to automatically retry HTTP requests on timeout or error.
Currently my code looks like this:
var req = http.get(url, doStuff)
.on('error', retry)
.setTimeout(10000, retry);
However, a single request can sometimes trigger both "on error" and "timeout" events. What is a better way of implementing retry?
I was looking for same thing and found interesting module requestretry, well suited for such requirement.
Here is usage:
var request = require('requestretry')
request({
url: myURL,
json: true,
maxAttempts: 5, // (default) try 5 times
retryDelay: 5000, // (default) wait for 5s before trying again
retrySrategy: request.RetryStrategies.HTTPOrNetworkError // (default) retry on 5xx or network errors
}, function(err, response, body){
// this callback will only be called when the request succeeded or after maxAttempts or on error
if (response) {
console.log('The number of request attempts: ' + response.attempts);
}
})
You could try something like this:
function doRequest(url, callback) {
var timer,
req,
sawResponse = false;
req = http.get(url, callback)
.on('error', function(err) {
clearTimeout(timer);
req.abort();
// prevent multiple execution of `callback` if error after
// response
if (!sawResponse)
doRequest(url, callback);
}).on('socket', function(sock) {
timer = setTimeout(function() {
req.abort();
doRequest(url, callback);
}, 10000);
}).once('response', function(res) {
sawResponse = true;
clearTimeout(timer);
});
}
UPDATE: In recent/modern versions of node, you can now specify a timeout
option (measured in milliseconds) which sets the socket timeout (before the socket is connected). For example:
http.get({
host: 'example.org',
path: '/foo',
timeout: 5000
}, (res) => {
// ...
});
This was the code that worked for me. The key was to destroy the socket after timeout as well as to check that the response is complete.
function httpGet(url, callback) {
var retry = function(e) {
console.log("Got error: " + e.message);
httpGet(url, callback); //retry
}
var req = http.get(url, function(res) {
var body = new Buffer(0);
res.on('data', function (chunk) {
body = Buffer.concat([body, chunk]);
});
res.on('end', function () {
if(this.complete) callback(body);
else retry({message: "Incomplete response"});
});
}).on('error', retry)
.setTimeout(20000, function(thing){
this.socket.destroy();
});
}