Question

I have a function that gets response over http. It runs some tests. Lately it started to happen that the test never finishes. So I introduced a time out. Then I found out that if I stop the database server the test script finishes with a db error that is in fact very good lead why the test didn’t finish as expected. So to get the error could help to save me time. Because I wouldn’t have to reproduce the whole test again manually.

Q1: Is there any way to let the connection time out but then get the response after the database server is restarted? Note that I cannot send the http request again as it would start the same text again.

Q2: I think that a solution would be to introduce timer while “waiting” for http response. But I don’t know how to do that. Any idea?

My function is like

def execute_db2_script(url)
  db2_database = 'RATIONAL'
  http_read_timeout=$http_read_timeout
  uri = URI.parse(url)
  start = Time.new

  connection = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, 443)
  connection.use_ssl = true
  begin 
    response = connection.start() do |http|
      http.open_timeout =  50
      http.read_timeout = http_read_timeout
      http.request_get(uri.request_uri)
    end
  rescue Timeout::Error
    time_out_message ="security time out - after #{$http_read_timeout} sec"
  return time_out_message       
  end       
  return response.body.gsub("\n","<BR>")
end

Answer 1

You can use retry keyword

def execute_db2_script(url)
  ...
  begin 
    ...
  rescue Timeout::Error
    time_out_message ="security time out - after #{$http_read_timeout} sec"
    if "the server is going to restart then"
      retry # this will restart begin-rescue-end block again
    else
      return time_out_message       
    end
  end       

  response.body.gsub("\n","<BR>")
end