configure 'time out' time for urllib

[Andreas Dahl]

Hi,

I use urllib to retrieve data via HTTP. Unfortunately my program crashes
after a while (after some loops) because the connection timed out.

raise socket.error, msg
IOError: [Errno socket error] (60, 'Connection timed out')

I am not so familiar with python, but is there a possibility to
configure the 'waiting time'? Or how can I handle such an event? To skip
that query and go to the next one would also work.

Many thanks in advance, Andreas

code:
params = urllib.urlencode({'rs': rs})
try:
file =
urllib.urlopen("http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/snp_ref.cgi?%s" %
params)
except IOError, message: # file open failed
print >> sys.stderr, "File could not be opend:", message
sys.exit(1)
data = file.readlines() # array with html-doc-content
file.close()

 

[wes weston]

Andreas,
I had a similar problem and coded in two tries; could be 3,4 etc.
I couldn't find a way to set the timeout.

 

[wes weston]

Andreas,
Follow the link in Pieter's reply. It explains that the method
changes the timeout for ALL connections. You won't need to recode
in sockets. Thanks Pieter.
wes