[REBOL] http timeout
From: galtbarber:mailandnews at: 24-Aug-2000 13:12
Hello, Rebolers!
Has anyone had the experience where you are trying to
download something big and it just times out?
The default in system/schemes/default/timeout is set to 30 (seconds?)
and the one for http in system/schemes/http/timeout is set to none
(I am typing this from memory, so hope I got the paths right)
now I am trying to download some big files automatically,
but sometimes they are real files that take a while to
download and other times the server is just glacially
slow to the point of not really even working.
I guess my point is, why not make the timeout so that
it says not how long to take for the whole thing to
finish downloading, which could be a long time,
but rather how long to wait, getting no new data,
before terminating that as hopeless.
Right now, if it is taking a while I have no idea
whatsoever of whether its a big file and I am getting
lots of data or whether it's a dud that never will give
me anything.
What would be useful then is if that 30 second timeout counted
as 30seconds of no activity, e.g. you haven't gotten a bloody
byte out of that request for 30 seconds, so timeout and go on
to the next. Right now it doesn't distinguish between
getting a lot and getting nothing.
Doesn't it seem reasonable that timeout could be implemented that
way?
I can create my own custom http using ftp in rebol and even
be doing several downloads simultaneously, and be able to tell
whether a link is dead or not, but writing the code for that
is sure not going to be too easy. I would have to get into
the http request/response header format, etc.
What do you think we should do?:
1) send to [feedback--rebol--com] requesting timeout be changed to detect real dead time.
2) write a whole download service using raw ftp to process downloading an entire list
of links.
3) clever hack of existing http protocol in rebol that fixes the problem.
I dont really know yet if 3 above is possible.
Comments, please?
-Galt
