XML-RPC timeout?

Question

I'm attempting to consume an XML-RPC webservice from C# (.NET 3.5). If it doesn't respond within 15 seconds, I'd like the request to time out, so that I can attempt to contact the backup webservice.

I am using the CookComputing.XmlRpc client.

Answer 1

From the XML-RPC.NET docs:

2.4 How do I set a timeout on a proxy method call?

Proxy classes are derived from IXmlRpcProxy and so inherit a Timeout property. This takes an integer which specifies the timeout in milliseconds. For example, to set a 5 second timeout:

ISumAndDiff proxy = XmlRpcProxyGen.Create<ISumAndDiff>();
proxy.Timeout = 5000;
SumAndDiffValue ret = proxy.SumAndDifference(2,3);

Answer 2

It might be worth to note that this doesn't work with an async model. To do this I would look at this post as this helped me overcome that problem.

For example

public interface IAddNumbersContract
{
    [XmlRpcBegin("add_numbers")]
    IAsyncResult BeginAddNumbers(int x, int y, AsyncCallback acb);

    [XmlRpcEnd]
    int EndAddNumbers(IAsyncResult asyncResult);
}

public class AddNumbersCaller
{
    public async Task<int> Add(int x, int y)
    {
        const int timeout = 5000;
        var service = XmlRpcProxyGen.Create<IAddNumbersContract>();
        var task = Task<int>.Factory.FromAsync((callback, o) => service.BeginAddNumbers(x, y, callback), service.EndAddNumbers, null);
        if (await Task.WhenAny(task, Task.Delay(timeout)) == task)
        {
            return task.Result;
        }

        throw new WebException("It timed out!");
    }
}