Ruby curb (libcurl): testing for time-out in GET request

Question

Using curb gem (https://github.com/taf2/curb) to GET from a REST API.

  resp = Curl.get("http://someurl.com/users.json") do |http|
    http.headers["API-Key"] = ENV["API_KEY"]
  end
  # do stuff with resp.body_str

I've started encountering occasional time-outs with the Curl.get.

Would like to add logic where I try to GET: if the request times out, we try it again, i.e.

loop do
  resp = Curl.get("http://someurl.com/users.json") do |http|
    http.headers["API-Key"] = ENV["API_KEY"]
  end

  # test result of Curl.get
  # if time-out, then then try again
end

Haven't been able to find/figure out how to test for a time-out result.

What am I missing?

UPDATED: added exception details

Curl::Err::TimeoutError: Timeout was reached
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/curb-0.9.3/lib/curl/easy.rb:73:in `perform'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/curb-0.9.3/lib/curl.rb:17:in `http'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/curb-0.9.3/lib/curl.rb:17:in `http'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/curb-0.9.3/lib/curl.rb:22:in `get'
/app/lib/tasks/redmine.rake:307:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

Answer 1

Here is the general idea of the rescue approach I mentioned in my comment:

loop do
  begin
    resp = Curl.get("http://someurl.com/users.json") do |http|
        http.headers["API-Key"] = ENV["API_KEY"]
    end
    # process successful response here
  rescue Curl::Err::TimeoutError
      # process error here
  end
end

You would then need to modify this to do the retries. Here is 1 implementation (not tested though):

# Returns the response on success, nil on TimeoutError
def get1(url)
  begin
    Curl.get(url) do |http|
      http.headers["API-Key"] = ENV["API_KEY"]
    end
  rescue Curl::Err::TimeoutError
    nil
  end
end


# Returns the response on success, nil on TimeoutErrors after all retry_count attempts.
def get_with_retries(url, retry_count)
  retry_count.times do
    result = get1(url)
    return result if result
  end
  nil
end


response = get_with_retries("http://someurl.com/users.json", 3)
if response
  # handle success
else
  # handle timeout failure
end

Answer 2

We can also do it in block

def handle_timeouts
   begin
     yield
   rescue Curl::Err::TimeoutError
     retry
   end
end

handle_timeouts do
  resp = Curl.get("http://someurl.com/users.json") do |http|
    http.headers["API-Key"] = ENV["API_KEY"]
  end
end