Python DBAPI time out for connections?

Question

I was attempting to test for connection failure, and unfortunately it's not failing if the ip address of the host is fire walled.

This is the code:

def get_connection(self, conn_data):
    rtu, hst, prt, usr, pwd, db = conn_data  
    try:
        self.conn = pgdb.connect(host=hst+":"+prt, user=usr, password=pwd, database=db)
        self.cur = self.conn.cursor()
        return True
    except pgdb.Error as e:
        logger.exception("Error trying to connect to the server.")
        return False

if self.get_connection(conn_data): # Do stuff here:

If I try to connect to a known server, but give an incorrect user name it will trigger the exception and fail.

However if I try to connect to a machine that does not respond (firewalled) it never gets passed self.conn = pgdb.connect()

How to I wait or test for time out rather than have my app appear to hang when a user miss types an ip address?

thanks

Answer 1

What you are experiencing is the pain of firewalls, and the timeout is the normal TCP timeout.

Answer 2

You can usually pass timeout argument in connect function. If it doesn't exist you could try with socket.timeout or default timeout:

import socket
socket.setdefaulttimeout(10) # sets timeout to 10 seconds

This will apply this setting to all connections(socket based) you make and will fail after 10 seconds of waiting.