No timeout on ipfs.ls is called

[mhhf]

Is there a reason why no timeout implemented on the http.request? My problem is: If I request an unavailable hash, the request and its socket stays open forever, which causes problems.

Tested on DigitalOcean Ubuntu 14.04 and OS X 10.10 With node 4.0.0 and ipfs version 0.3.8-dev.
In the following code the callback is never called:

var ipfsApi = require('ipfs-api');

var ipfs = ipfsApi('localhost','5001');

var start = (new Date());
console.log( 'started on ' + start );

ipfs.ls("QmPzWqn4ZRhGFJCTnNvaz3Wwe6inKQ4n6nJic4bAw3maz3", function( err, res ) {
  console.log('got error after '+((new Date() - start)), err );
});

[jbenet]

Our general view with timeouts is that they're extremely hard to choose
right.

This is actually a very serious problem in the developing world. Many web
servers have HTTP timeouts that are fine for the developed world clients,
but brutal against developing world / rural web clients. High latencies
make many websites entirely unaccessible.

in general, instead of prescribing what timeouts "make sense", we try to
leave timeouts to the callers. However i do agree some default timeout
(that can be turned off) makes sense for the sake of not leaving things
open and hanging. We should:

• allow the user to specify timeouts
• have a default (huge) timeout OR require the timeout param

a huge timeout value could be like 30min. (but note even that is not right
in terms of using an ipfs node programmatically. sometimes you want to wait
for the content to be available even if that means waiting hours...

On Monday, October 5, 2015, Denis Erfurt notifications@github.com wrote:

Is there a reason why no timeout implemented on the http.request? My
problem is: If I request an unavailable hash, the request and its socket
stays open forever, which causes problems.

Tested on DigitalOcean Ubuntu 14.04 and OS X 10.10 With node 4.0.0 and
ipfs version 0.3.8-dev.
In the following code the callback is never called:

var ipfsApi = require('ipfs-api');

var ipfs = ipfsApi('localhost','5001');

var start = (new Date());
console.log( 'started on ' + start );
ipfs.ls("QmPzWqn4ZRhGFJCTnNvaz3Wwe6inKQ4n6nJic4bAw3maz3", function( err, res ) {
console.log('got error after '+((new Date() - start)), err );
});

—
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#71.

[victorb]

I would like to suggest doing something like this:

var ipfsApi = require('ipfs-api');

var ipfs = ipfsApi({
    host: 'localhost',
    port: '5001',
    timeout: 10 // ten seconds, default to null = requests never time out, like now
});

var start = (new Date());
console.log( 'started on ' + start );

ipfs.ls("QmPzWqn4ZRhGFJCTnNvaz3Wwe6inKQ4n6nJic4bAw3maz3", function( err, res ) {
  console.log('got error after '+((new Date() - start)), err );
});

Two changes required for this to happen:

• IPFS params is turned into object instead of normal parameters (for convenience)
• Adding of the timeout param

[jbenet]

maybe call it defaultTimeout or globalTimeout or something. timeout makes me think it's a timeout just for the ipfsApi function.

[daviddias]

maybe have defaultTimeout to set for every function and then a timeout for each of the calls?

[daviddias]

How does everyone feel about this issue? Something to be added meanwhile?

[daviddias]

There is more to this discussion, follow here -> https://github.com/ipfs/interface-ipfs-core/issues/58

[dignifiedquire]

@diasdavid I suggest moving this to milestone 4