How timeout works for http.get in Nodejs?

Question

I am using https.get to request send a GET request to an URL: https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#httprequestoptions-callback

I am trying to figure out how the timeout option works.

Someone mentions that the timeout option strictly means connect timeout, and has no effect once the socket is established in this post: How to set a timeout on a http.request() in Node?

I have simple getRequest function with retry logic. Besides the timeout option I also added a setTimeout function to handle issues after the socket is opened.

function getRequest(url) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const req = https.get(url, {timeout: 1000}, res => {
      let rawData = '';
      res.on('data', chunk => {
        rawData += chunk;
      });
      res.on('end', () => {
        resolve(rawData);
      });
    }).setTimeout(1000);
    req.on('error', err => {
      reject(new Error(err))
    })
    req.on('timeout', () => {
      req.end();
      getRequest(url);
    })
  });
}

I ran some tests, and out of 100 requests with this function, at least 1 takes exactly 5 seconds. That 5 seconds must be coming from somewhere, some default values, that I could not find.

How can I make sure that after 1 second the connection is closed and retry is initiated?

Edit: I tried all different kind of node modules with timeout capabilities: node-fetch, axios, etc. I face this issue using these modules as well. Axios throws the timeout error, but the node app itself does not finish, only after 5 seconds.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 24 '23 at 13:51

this is an example:

const https = require('https');

function getRequest(url, retries = 3) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const req = https.get(url, { timeout: 1000 }, res => {
      let rawData = '';
      res.on('data', chunk => {
        rawData += chunk;
      });
      res.on('end', () => {
        resolve(rawData);
      });
    }).setTimeout(1000);

    req.on('error', err => {
      if (retries > 0) {
        return resolve(getRequest(url, retries - 1));
      }
      reject(new Error(err));
    });

    req.on('timeout', () => {
      req.abort();
      if (retries > 0) {
        return resolve(getRequest(url, retries - 1));
      }
      reject(new Error('Request timeout'));
    });
  });
}

// Usage
getRequest('https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#httprequestoptions-callback')
  .then(data => console.log(data))
  .catch(error => console.error(error));

I just tried, running this in loop with some delay in between. There are always some requests, which takes exactly 5 seconds. — rasekoli, Aug 24 '23 at 13:56
we have Connection Timeout ({ timeout: 1000 } in the options) and Socket Timeout (setTimeout(1000) on the request) — Ali Reza Riahi, Aug 24 '23 at 14:00
I am not sure what other reason can be for some requests to take exactly 5 seconds. — rasekoli, Aug 24 '23 at 14:05

How timeout works for http.get in Nodejs?

1 Answers1