How can you limit the allowed execution time of specific methods in the python version of Google App Engine?

Question

Since the signal module is not supported in the python version of Google App Engine, what is the simplest way to call a method and throw/catch an exception if the method doe

Answer 1

In loops, you can store the time the loop started and check how long it's been going on each iteration.

If you're not in a loop, things are a bit trickier. You could add the time-checking bit every few lines of code. This, of course, makes for really ugly code, but without the ability to spawn threads that could run a timer in the background and interrupt the running code, there's not much of a way around it.