Distinguish timeout from user cancellation - c#

HttpClient has a builtin timeout feature (despite being all asynchronous, i.e. timeouts could be considered orthogonal to the http request functionality and thus be handled by generic asynchronous utilities, but that aside) and when the timeout kicks in, it'll throw a TaskCanceledException (wrapped in an AggregateException).
The TCE contains a CancellationToken that equals CancellationToken.None.
Now if I provide HttpClient with a CancellationToken of my own and use that to cancel the operation before it finishes (or times out), I get the exact same TaskCanceledException, again with a CancellationToken.None.
Is there still a way, by looking only at the exception thrown, to figure out whether a timeout canceled the request, without having to make my own CancellationToken accessible to the code that checks the exception?
P.S. Could this be a bug and CancellationToken got somehow wrongly fixed to CancellationToken.None? In the cancelled using custom CancellationToken case, I'd expect TaskCanceledException.CancellationToken to equal that custom token.
Edit
To make the problem a bit more clear, with access to the original CancellationTokenSource, it is easy to distinguish timeout and user cancellation:
origCancellationTokenSource.IsCancellationRequested == true
Getting the CancellationToken from the exception though gives the wrong answer:
((TaskCanceledException) e.InnerException).CancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested == false
Here a minimal example, due to popular demand:
public void foo()
{
makeRequest().ContinueWith(task =>
{
try
{
var result = task.Result;
// do something with the result;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
TaskCanceledException innerException = e.InnerException as TaskCanceledException;
bool timedOut = innerException != null && innerException.CancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested == false;
// Unfortunately, the above .IsCancellationRequested
// is always false, no matter if the request was
// cancelled using CancellationTaskSource.Cancel()
// or if it timed out
}
});
}
public Task<HttpResponseMessage> makeRequest()
{
var cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
HttpClient client = new HttpClient() { Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10) };
HttpRequestMessage httpRequestMessage = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, "url");
passCancellationTokenToOtherPartOfTheCode(cts);
return client.SendAsync(httpRequestMessage, cts.Token);
}

The accepted answer is certainly how this should work in theory, but unfortunately in practice IsCancellationRequested does not (reliably) get set on the token that is attached to the exception:
Cancelling an HttpClient Request - Why is TaskCanceledException.CancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested false?

Yes, they both return the same exception (possibly because of timeout internally using a token too) but it can be easily figured out by doing this:
catch (OperationCanceledException ex)
{
if (token.IsCancellationRequested)
{
return -1;
}
return -2;
}
so basically if you hit the exception but your token is not cancelled, well it was a regular http timeout

Related

HttpClient.GetAsync fails after running for some time with TaskCanceledException "A task was cancelled" [duplicate]

It works fine when have one or two tasks however throws an error "A task was cancelled" when we have more than one task listed.
List<Task> allTasks = new List<Task>();
allTasks.Add(....);
allTasks.Add(....);
Task.WaitAll(allTasks.ToArray(), configuration.CancellationToken);
private static Task<T> HttpClientSendAsync<T>(string url, object data, HttpMethod method, string contentType, CancellationToken token)
{
HttpRequestMessage httpRequestMessage = new HttpRequestMessage(method, url);
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient();
httpClient.Timeout = new TimeSpan(Constants.TimeOut);
if (data != null)
{
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(Helper.ToJSON(data));
MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream(byteArray);
httpRequestMessage.Content = new StringContent(new StreamReader(memoryStream).ReadToEnd(), Encoding.UTF8, contentType);
}
return httpClient.SendAsync(httpRequestMessage).ContinueWith(task =>
{
var response = task.Result;
return response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().ContinueWith(stringTask =>
{
var json = stringTask.Result;
return Helper.FromJSON<T>(json);
});
}).Unwrap();
}
There's 2 likely reasons that a TaskCanceledException would be thrown:
Something called Cancel() on the CancellationTokenSource associated with the cancellation token before the task completed.
The request timed out, i.e. didn't complete within the timespan you specified on HttpClient.Timeout.
My guess is it was a timeout. (If it was an explicit cancellation, you probably would have figured that out.) You can be more certain by inspecting the exception:
try
{
var response = task.Result;
}
catch (TaskCanceledException ex)
{
// Check ex.CancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested here.
// If false, it's pretty safe to assume it was a timeout.
}
I ran into this issue because my Main() method wasn't waiting for the task to complete before returning, so the Task<HttpResponseMessage> was being cancelled when my console program exited.
C# ≥ 7.1
You can make the main method asynchronous and await the task.
public static async Task Main(){
Task<HttpResponseMessage> myTask = sendRequest(); // however you create the Task
HttpResponseMessage response = await myTask;
// process the response
}
C# < 7.1
The solution was to call myTask.GetAwaiter().GetResult() in Main() (from this answer).
var clientHttp = new HttpClient();
clientHttp.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30);
The above is the best approach for waiting on a large request.
You are confused about 30 minutes; it's random time and you can give any time that you want.
In other words, request will not wait for 30 minutes if they get results before 30 minutes.
30 min means request processing time is 30 min.
When we occurred error "Task was cancelled", or large data request requirements.
Another possibility is that the result is not awaited on the client side. This can happen if any one method on the call stack does not use the await keyword to wait for the call to be completed.
Promoting #JobaDiniz's comment to an answer:
Do not do the obvious thing and dispose the HttpClient instance, even though the code "looks right":
async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Method() {
using (var client = new HttpClient())
return client.GetAsync(request);
}
Disposing the HttpClient instance can cause following HTTP requests started by other instances of HttpClient to be cancelled!
The same happens with C#'s new RIAA syntax; slightly less obvious:
async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Method() {
using var client = new HttpClient();
return client.GetAsync(request);
}
Instead, the correct approach is to cache a static instance of HttpClient for your app or library, and reuse it:
static HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Method() {
return client.GetAsync(request);
}
(The Async() request methods are all thread safe.)
in my .net core 3.1 applications I am getting two problem where inner cause was timeout exception.
1, one is i am getting aggregate exception and in it's inner exception was timeout exception
2, other case was Task canceled exception
My solution is
catch (Exception ex)
{
if (ex.InnerException is TimeoutException)
{
ex = ex.InnerException;
}
else if (ex is TaskCanceledException)
{
if ((ex as TaskCanceledException).CancellationToken == null || (ex as TaskCanceledException).CancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested == false)
{
ex = new TimeoutException("Timeout occurred");
}
}
Logger.Fatal(string.Format("Exception at calling {0} :{1}", url, ex.Message), ex);
}
In my situation, the controller method was not made as async and the method called inside the controller method was async.
So I guess its important to use async/await all the way to top level to avoid issues like these.
I was using a simple call instead of async. As soon I added await and made method async it started working fine.
public async Task<T> ExecuteScalarAsync<T>(string query, object parameter = null, CommandType commandType = CommandType.Text) where T : IConvertible
{
using (IDbConnection db = new SqlConnection(_con))
{
return await db.ExecuteScalarAsync<T>(query, parameter, null, null, commandType);
}
}
Another reason can be that if you are running the service (API) and put a breakpoint in the service (and your code is stuck at some breakpoint (e.g Visual Studio solution is showing Debugging instead of Running)). and then hitting the API from the client code. So if the service code a paused on some breakpoint, you just hit F5 in VS.

Cancellable Async Web Request

I am trying to make a generic method that will cancel an Async web request and any additional operations associated with it. I found another question regarding this such as this.
And I have written a helper class that will do just this. I present it below:
public static class Helpers
{
public static async Task<string> GetJson(string url,
CancellationTokenSource cancellationTokenSource,
bool useSynchronizationContext = true)
{
try
{
var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
string jsonStringResult;
using (WebResponse response = await request.GetResponseAsync()
.WithCancellation(cancellationTokenSource.Token,
request.Abort, useSynchronizationContext))
{
Stream dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
jsonStringResult = await reader.ReadToEndAsync();
reader.Close();
dataStream.Close();
}
cancellationTokenSource.Token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
return jsonStringResult;
}
catch (Exception ex) when (ex is OperationCanceledException
|| ex is TaskCanceledException)
{
}
catch (Exception ex) when (ex is WebException
&& ((WebException)ex).Status == WebExceptionStatus.RequestCanceled)
{
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
//Any other exception
}
finally
{
cancellationTokenSource.Dispose();
}
return default;
}
public static async Task<T> WithCancellation<T>(this Task<T> task,
CancellationToken cancellationToken, Action action,
bool useSynchronizationContext)
{
using (cancellationToken.Register(action, useSynchronizationContext))
{
return await task;
}
}
}
Notice the line
cancellationTokenSource.Token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
right before returning the JSON string.
When the operation is canceled and the flow of execution is on line
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
for example, all lines below (reader.Close() etc.) will be executed and the exception will be thrown when ThrowIfCancelationRequested() is executed - is that correct? Am I missing something?
If so, is there a way to cancel everything at once?
Thanks everyone for their response,
After the answer provided and all really useful comments I updated the implementation.I used HttpClient and the extension method in the link for having a task that cannot actually being canceled to behave like one that can - readAsStringAsync is actually executed since it cannot accept a cancellation token.
public static class Helpers
{
public static async Task<string> GetJson(string url,CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
try
{
string jsonStringResult;
using (var client = new HttpClient())
{
cancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
using (var response = await client.GetAsync(url, cancellationToken))
{
jsonStringResult = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().WithCancellation(cancellationToken);
}
}
return jsonStringResult;
}
catch (Exception ex) when (ex is OperationCanceledException)
{
}
catch (Exception ex) when (ex is WebException exception && exception.Status == WebExceptionStatus.RequestCanceled)
{
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
//LogException(ex);
}
return default;
}
public static Task<T> WithCancellation<T>(this Task<T> task, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
return task.IsCompleted
? task: task.ContinueWith(completedTask => completedTask.GetAwaiter().GetResult(),cancellationToken,TaskContinuationOptions.ExecuteSynchronously,TaskScheduler.Default);
}
}
all lines below (reader.Close() etc.) will be executed and the
exception will be thrown when ThrowIfCancelationRequested() is
executed - is that correct? Am I missing something?
If so, is there a way to cancel everything at once?
First of all, operation that you want to cancel has to explicitly support being canceled. So, you have to push your best to use a code for executing some operation in a way which somehow takes CancellationToken as an argument. If it is not possible, then you have no other chance.
That's why this concept is called Cooperative cancellation. Because almost always both sides should be aware of that cancellation happened. Client-side should be aware of that the code was actually canceled, it’s not enough for a client to know that cancellation was just requested. For the callee, it’s important to know about the fact that cancellation was requested in order to properly finish itself.
Regarding to checking whether operation is cancelled while executing Close method of stream and reader. You have to call cleanup methods always whether operation is cancelled or not if you want to avoid memory leaks. Of course I suggest you to use using statement which will automatically do that cleanup.
And by the way, for making some function cancelable you don't have to check whether cancellation is requested before executing each line. You just have to check whether cancellation is request before and after executing some long-running operation. And pass cancellation token if that long-running operations supports cancelling through cancellation token property.
Also, you have to take a look for side-effects. Don’t cancel if you’ve already incurred side-effects that your method isn’t prepared to revert on the way out that would leave you in an inconsistent state.
Some general code-block might be so:
if(ct.IsCancellationRequested)
{
break; // or throw
}
await DoSomething(ct);
if (ct.IsCancellationRequested)
{
// if there is no side-effect
return; // or throw
// or, we already did something in `DoSomething` method
// do some rollback
}
As a solution, you can use some different objects like HttpClient or WebRequest for executing async, awaitable and cancelable web request. You can take a look to that link for implementation details.

How to cancel .Net Core Web API request using Angular?

I have the following two applications
Angular 6/7 App
.Net Core Web API
I am making GET request to API using Angular's HttpClient as shown below
this.subscription = this.httpClient.get('api/Controller/LongRunningProcess')
.subscribe((response) =>
{
// Handling response
});
API controller's LongRunningProcess method has the following code
[HttpGet]
[Route("LongRunningProcess")]
public async Task<IActionResult> LongRunningProcess(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
try
{
// Dummy long operation
await Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
// Option 1 (Not working)
if (cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested)
break;
// Option 2 (Not working)
cancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
Thread.Sleep(6000);
}
}, cancellationToken);
}
catch (OperationCanceledException e)
{
Console.WriteLine($"{nameof(OperationCanceledException)} thrown with message: {e.Message}");
}
return Ok();
}
Now I want to cancel this long-running process so I am unsubscribing from client side as shown below
// On cancel button's click
this.subscription.unsubscribe();
Above code will cancel the request and I can see it is canceled in the Network tab of the browser as shown below
But it is not going to make IsCancellationRequested to true in the method LongRunningProcess of the API, so the operation will keep going.
[Note]: Both Option 1 and Option 2 in API method are not working even if I make a call using postman.
Question: Is there any way to cancel that LongRunningProcess method's operation?
When angular cancel request, you can get cancellation token from http context
CancellationToken cancellationToken = HttpContext.RequestAborted;
if (cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested)
{
// The client has aborted the request
}
You dont need break in this case only use like this
[HttpGet]
[Route("LongRunningProcess")]
public async Task<IActionResult> LongRunningProcess(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
cancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
// Dummy long operation
await Task.Factory.StartNew(() => Thread.Sleep(60000));
}
return Ok();
}
You can read it more here
This is because your dummy long operation does not monitor the canncellationToken. I'm not sure it is actually your intention to start 10 one-minute tasks all in parallel without any delay, which is what your code does.
In order to have a dummy long operation, the code would be like
[HttpGet]
[Route("LongRunningProcess")]
public async Task<IActionResult> LongRunningProcess(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
// Dummy long operation
await Task.Run(() =>
{
for (var i = 0; i < 60; i++)
{
if (cancel.IsCancellationRequested)
break;
Task.Delay(1000).Wait();
}
});
return Ok();
}
Task.Run is just equivalent to Task.Factory.StartNew, by the way.
However, if you just need a dummy long-run operation in your web API, then you can also simply use Task.Delay, which supports cancellation token. Task.Delay throws an exception when the request is canceled, so add exception handling code when you need to do something after request cancellation.
[HttpGet]
[Route("LongRunningProcess")]
public async Task<IActionResult> LongRunningProcess(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
// Dummy long operation
await Task.Delay(60000, cancel);
return Ok();
}
Any http observables still running at the time will complete and run their logic unless you unsubscribe in onDestroy(). Whether the consequences are trivial or not will depend upon what you do in the subscribe handler. If you try to update something that doesn't exist anymore you may get an error.
Tip: The Subscription contains a closed boolean property that may be useful in advanced cases. For HTTP this will be set when it completes. In Angular it might be useful in some situations to set a _isDestroyed property in ngDestroy which can be checked by your subscribe handler.
Tip 2: If handling multiple subscriptions you can create an ad-hoc new Subscription() object and add(...) any other subscriptions to it - so when you unsubscribe from the main one it will unsubscribe all the added subscriptions too.
So, best practice is to use takeUntil() and unsubscribe from http calls when the component is destroyed.
import { takeUntil } from 'rxjs/operators';
.....
ngOnDestroy(): void {
this.destroy$.next(); // trigger the unsubscribe
this.destroy$.complete(); // finalize & clean up the subject stream
}
var cancellationToken = new CanellationToken();
cancellationToken.CancelAfter(2000);
using (var response = await _httpClient.GetAsync("emp",
HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead, cancellationTokenSource.Token))
{
response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
var stream = await response.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync();
var emp = await JsonSerializer.DeserializeAsync<List<empDto>>(stream, _options);
}
Further we can also have this "CancellationToken" class, which is nothing much Http client method which terminates the request after certain time-interval.
In angular subscription.unsubscribe(); closes the channel and causes CORE to cancel the API caller's thread, that's good.
Don't use await Task.Run(()... This creates a result/task that should be disposed, if not, the task keeps going, your pattern doesn't permit this - that's why it continues to run.
Simply - 'await this.YourLongRunningFunction()', I'm pretty sure that when the owning thread throws the OperationCancelled exception your task will end.
If "3" doesn't work, then pass a cancellation token to your long running task and set that when you catch your OperationCancelled exception.

Any way to differentiate Cancel and Timeout

I have some code that is validating some data by making calls to a number of other services. I start all of the calls in parallel and then wait until at least one of them finishes. If any of the requests fail, I don't care about the result of the other calls.
I make the calls with HttpClient and I have passed an HttpMessageHandler in that does a bunch of logging. Essentially:
protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
HttpResponseMessage response = null;
try
{
response = await base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
}
catch (OperationCanceledException ex)
{
LogTimeout(...);
throw;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
LogFailure(...);
throw;
}
finally
{
LogComplete(...);
}
return response;
}
No the part that I'm having trouble with is when I cancel the requests. When I cancel a request, I'm doing it on purpose, so I don't want it to get logged as a timeout, but there doesn't appear to be any difference between a cancellation and a real timeout.
Is there anyway to accomplish this?
Edit: I need to clarify this, a little bit. The service making the calls in parallel is passing in CancellationTokens with a timeout:
var ct = new CancellationTokenSource(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2));
So when the server takes more than two seconds to respond, I get an OperationCanceledException, and if I manually cancel the token source (say because another server returned an error after 1 second), then I still get an OperationCanceledException. Ideally, I would be able to look at CancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested to determine if it was cancelled due to a timeout, as opposed to explicitly requested to be cancelled, but it appears that you get the same value regardless of how it was canceled.
If you want to distinguish the two cancellation types, then you need to use two different cancellation tokens. There's no other way. This is not too hard since they can be linked - just a bit awkward.
The cleanest way to write this IMO is to move the timeout code into the SendAsync method instead of the calling method:
protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
using (var cts = CancellationTokenSource.CreateLinkedTokenSource(cancellationToken))
{
cts.CancelAfter(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2));
try
{
return await base.SendAsync(request, cts.Token);
}
catch (OperationCanceledException ex)
{
if (cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested)
return null;
LogTimeout(...);
throw;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
LogFailure(...);
throw;
}
finally
{
LogComplete(...);
}
}
}
If you don't want to move the timeout code into SendAsync, then you'll need to do the logging outside of that method, too.
If the exceptions aren't telling you the difference between the two cases then you will need to check with either the Task or the CancellationToken to see if there was actually a cancellation.
I would lean toward asking the Task which will have its IsCanceled property return true if an unhandled OperationCanceledException was thrown (using CancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested inside base.SendAsync most likely). Something like this...
HttpResponseMessage response = null;
Task sendTask = null;
try
{
sendTask = base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
await sendTask;
}
catch (OperationCanceledException ex)
{
if (!sendTask.IsCancelled)
{
LogTimeout(...);
throw;
}
}
EDIT
In response to the update to the question, I wanted to update my answer. You are right cancellation whether it is specifically requested on the CancellationTokenSource or if it is caused by a timeout will lead to exactly the same outcome. If you decompile CancellationTokenSource you will see that for the timeout it just sets a Timer callback that will explicitly call CancellationTokenSource.Cancel when the timeout is reached, so both ways will end up calling the same Cancel method.
I think if you want to tell the difference you will need to derive from CancellationTokenSource (it isn't a sealed class) and then add your own custom cancel method that will set a flag to let you know that you explicitly cancelled the operation rather than letting it time out.
This is unfortunate since you will have both your custom cancel method and the original Cancel method available and will have to be sure to use the custom one. You may be able to get away with your custom logic just hiding the existing Cancel operation with something like this:
class CustomCancellationTokenSource : CancellationTokenSource
{
public bool WasManuallyCancelled {get; private set;}
public new void Cancel()
{
WasManuallyCancelled = true;
base.Cancel();
}
}
I would think that hiding the base method will work, you can give it a shot and find out.

appending timeouts to asynchronous requests in WinRT

I'm using this piece of code to append a TimeOut to a request call that I'm making to ensure that we don't encounter a slow internet connection - and that its handled appropriately.
When I DO meet the timeout condition I get an error message that I've been unable to fix within the extended function.
How to go about this task in general?
Code:
public static class SOExtensions
{
public static Task<T> WithTimeout<T>(this Task<T> task, TimeSpan duration)
{
return Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
{
bool b = task.Wait(duration);
if (b) return task.Result;
return default(T);
});
}
}
Usage:
var response = await HttpWebRequest
.Create(request)
.GetResponseAsync()
.WithTimeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1));
I handle AggregateException with this (and through a WebException), but it still generates AggregateException when the timeout fails.
I recommend using CancellationToken for timeouts (new CancellationTokenSource(myTimeSpan).Token), which you can then use within your async methods (e.g., for HttpClient, you pass the token to the GetAsync method). This takes up fewer resources because the HTTP request itself is canceled.
But if you want an "external" timeout, a more natural approach would be this:
public static async Task<T> WithTimeout<T>(this Task<T> task, TimeSpan duration)
{
var timeout = Task.Delay(duration);
var completeTask = await Task.WhenAny(task, timeout);
if (completeTask == timeout)
return default(T);
else
return await task;
}
This will prevent the exceptions from being wrapped into an AggregateException. It's not as efficient as the CancellationToken approach, though, which would look like this:
var timeout = new CancellationTokenSource(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1));
var response = await new HttpClient().GetAsync(uri, timeout.Token);
Note that the CancellationToken approach will throw OperationCanceledException instead of returning a default(T) if there is a timeout.

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