feedparser with timeout

Question

My code got stuck on this function call:

feedparser.parse("http://...")

This worked before. The url is even not possible to open in the browser. How would you cure this case? Is there a timeout possibility? I'd like to continue as if nothing would happen (only with printing some message or log this issue)

score 23 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 05 '16 at 12:05

23

Use Python requests library for network IO, feedparser for parsing only:

# Do request using requests library and timeout
try:
    resp = requests.get(rss_feed, timeout=20.0)
except requests.ReadTimeout:
    logger.warn("Timeout when reading RSS %s", rss_feed)
    return

# Put it to memory stream object universal feedparser
content = BytesIO(resp.content)

# Parse content
feed = feedparser.parse(content)

answered Sep 05 '16 at 12:05

Mikko Ohtamaa

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It is better than specifying the global timeout but it might not fix the issue due to the reason pointed out in my answer (`requests.get()` may block for much longer than the `timeout` value). Follow the link for details. – jfs Mar 24 '18 at 21:20
1

I like this solution. I have http settings that work really well for my purposes, but wanted to feedparser for the variations I find in rss feeds. This allows me to do both. Thanks! – jsfa11 Jan 10 '19 at 17:00

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

17

You can specify timeout globally using socket.setdefaulttimeout().

The timeout may limit how long an individual socket operation may last -- feedparser.parse() may perform many socket operations and therefore the total time spent on dns, establishing the tcp connection, sending/receiving data may be much longer. See Read timeout using either urllib2 or any other http library.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Community

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answered Mar 19 '12 at 15:22

jfs

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OK, I used it but don't know if it works because the URL with endless loading is active again. – xralf Mar 19 '12 at 15:33

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 08 '20 at 08:26

6

According to the author's recommendation[1], you should use requests library to do http request, and parse result to feedparser.

[1] https://github.com/kurtmckee/feedparser/pull/80

answered Jul 08 '20 at 08:26

apporc

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feedparser with timeout

3 Answers3