Repeating a function in C# until it no longer throws an exception

Question

I\'ve got a class that calls a SOAP interface, and gets an array of data back. However, if this request times out, it throws an exception. This is good. However, I want m

Answer 1

You must place the try/catch block inside a loop construct. If you wish not to consume 100% of your processor place a Thread.Sleep in the catch block, so everytime an exception occurs, it will wait some time, freeing the processor to do other things.

// iterate 100 times... not forever!
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
    try {
        // do your work here;

        break; // break the loop if everything is fine
    } catch {
        Thread.Sleep(1000);
    }
}

You could also specify exception type, so that only the timeout exception is handled, and other kinds of exceptions pass-through.

// iterate 100 times... not forever!
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
    try {
        // do your work here;

        break; // break the loop if everything is fine
    } catch (TimeOutException) {
        Thread.Sleep(1000);
    }
}

Note that, TimeOutException should be replaced by the real name of the exception... I don't know if that is the real name.

Also adjust the sleep time, given in millisecs and the amount of repeats, in the case I presented, 100 repeats of 1000ms yields a maximum wait of 1 minute and 40 seconds, plus the operation time itself.