Set timeout for xmlrpclib.ServerProxy

Question

I am using xmlrpclib.ServerProxy to make RPC calls to a remote server. If there is not a network connection to the server it takes the default 10 seconds to return a socket.

Answer 1

I wanted a small, clean, but also explicit version, so based on all other answers here, this is what I came up with:

import xmlrpclib


class TimeoutTransport(xmlrpclib.Transport):

    def __init__(self, timeout, use_datetime=0):
        self.timeout = timeout
        # xmlrpclib uses old-style classes so we cannot use super()
        xmlrpclib.Transport.__init__(self, use_datetime)

    def make_connection(self, host):
        connection = xmlrpclib.Transport.make_connection(self, host)
        connection.timeout = self.timeout
        return connection


class TimeoutServerProxy(xmlrpclib.ServerProxy):

    def __init__(self, uri, timeout=10, transport=None, encoding=None, verbose=0, allow_none=0, use_datetime=0):
        t = TimeoutTransport(timeout)
        xmlrpclib.ServerProxy.__init__(self, uri, t, encoding, verbose, allow_none, use_datetime)


proxy = TimeoutServerProxy(some_url)

I didn't realize at first xmlrpclib has old-style classes so I found it useful with a comment on that, otherwise everything should be pretty self-explanatory.

I don't see why httplib.HTTP would have to be subclassed as well, if someone can enlighten me on this, please do. The above solution is tried and works.

Answer 2

Here another smart and very pythonic solution using Python's with statement:

import socket
import xmlrpc.client

class MyServerProxy:
    def __init__(self, url, timeout=None):
        self.__url = url
        self.__timeout = timeout
        self.__prevDefaultTimeout = None

    def __enter__(self):
        try:
            if self.__timeout:
                self.__prevDefaultTimeout = socket.getdefaulttimeout()
                socket.setdefaulttimeout(self.__timeout)
            proxy = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy(self.__url, allow_none=True)
        except Exception as ex:
            raise Exception("Unable create XMLRPC-proxy for url '%s': %s" % (self.__url, ex))
        return proxy
    def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
        if self.__prevDefaultTimeout is None:
            socket.setdefaulttimeout(self.__prevDefaultTimeout)

This class can be used like this:

with MyServerProxy('http://1.2.3.4', 20) as proxy:
    proxy.dummy()

Answer 3

The following example works with Python 2.7.4.

import xmlrpclib
from xmlrpclib import *
import httplib

def Server(url, *args, **kwargs):
    t = TimeoutTransport(kwargs.get('timeout', 20))
    if 'timeout' in kwargs:
       del kwargs['timeout']
    kwargs['transport'] = t
    server = xmlrpclib.Server(url, *args, **kwargs)
    return server

TimeoutServerProxy = Server

class TimeoutTransport(xmlrpclib.Transport):

    def __init__(self, timeout, use_datetime=0):
        self.timeout = timeout
        return xmlrpclib.Transport.__init__(self, use_datetime)

    def make_connection(self, host):
        conn = xmlrpclib.Transport.make_connection(self, host)
        conn.timeout = self.timeout
        return connrpclib.Server(url, *args, **kwargs)