[Python-Dev] Adding timeout option to httplib...connect()

[Guido van Rossum]

I recently needed to access an HTTP URL with a timeout. I ended up
monkey-patching httplib.HTTPConnection so that the connect() method
has an optional second paramer, timeout, defaulting to None; if not
None, a call to settimeout() is added right after successful creation
of the socket.

Does anybody else think this is a good idea? (Personally I think this
should've been done years ago. :-) Shall I check it into the head?

Index: httplib.py
===================================================================
--- httplib.py  (revision 53456)
+++ httplib.py  (working copy)
@@ -656,7 +656,7 @@
     def set_debuglevel(self, level):
         self.debuglevel = level

-    def connect(self):
+    def connect(self, timeout=None):
         """Connect to the host and port specified in __init__."""
         msg = "getaddrinfo returns an empty list"
         for res in socket.getaddrinfo(self.host, self.port, 0,
@@ -664,6 +664,8 @@
             af, socktype, proto, canonname, sa = res
             try:
                 self.sock = socket.socket(af, socktype, proto)
+                if timeout is not None:
+                    self.sock.settimeout(timeout)
                 if self.debuglevel > 0:
                     print "connect: (%s, %s)" % (self.host, self.port)
                 self.sock.connect(sa)


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)