PHP cURL timeout ignored

Question

Using curl_setopt() I have set CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS to 1000 (1 second) and have set up another script that sleeps for 5 seconds, then responds 200 OK (using sleep()) which I call for testing purposes. My script always waits for the response, even though it should yield in a cURL timeout error.

How do I make the timeout work as expected and interrupt the request?

$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => TRUE,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => TRUE,
  CURLOPT_NOBODY => TRUE,
  CURLOPT_PROTOCOLS => CURLPROTO_HTTP | CURLPROTO_HTTPS,
  CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS => 1000,
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 5,
  CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Linkit/2.x Drupal/7.x',
));
$document = curl_exec($ch);

I have also tried CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS and also the variants without the _MS suffixes.

I'm using PHP 5.3.4 with cURL 7.19.7 on OS X 10.6, XAMPP.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 19:24:28Z

12

The CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT or CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS define the maximum amount of time that cURL can take to connect to the server but in your case, the connection is successful so the time-out no longer applies.

You need to use CURLOPT_TIMEOUT or CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS which define the maximum amount of time cURL can execute for.

For a complete list of options supported by PHP, look at the curl_setopt documentation.

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 19:24

CommunityBot

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answered Jul 23, 2011 at 17:15

Francois Deschenes

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4 Comments

Francois Deschenes Over a year ago

@Betamos - I've tested your script above using my own URL that had a 5 second sleep in it and it did timeout as it should. I'm also on OS X. Is there anything above the sleep in your code?

Betamos Over a year ago

No, it isn't. This is really weird. Can it be the way cURL is built or something? It just won't work.

Francois Deschenes Over a year ago

@Betamos - Could there be a white space at the top of the script that sleeps? Are you using the version of cURL bundled with the OS? If so, that would be the same one I'm using. Did you use curl_getinfo to check the return code?

Betamos Over a year ago

If the URL responds, then there is no delay. Also response HTTP codes works perfectly. It more and more looks like there is an issue with my cURL installation. I don't remembered how I installed cURL. How would I check that?

CrayonViolent · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-23 17:21:50Z

4

The curl library makes a system call and operates independently of php (sidenote: that's why it is possible to take advantage of multi-threading with curl, even though php itself doesn't support threading). So if you make the curl call and then sleep(), curl still runs.

Also, the timeout setting is for how long to wait for the request to timeout, not your script. For instance, if I make a curl request to google.com and google.com is taking forever to respond, the timeout setting lets me tell curl how long to sit around and wait for google.com to respond.

edit:

Okay, so you are saying you have your curl script that makes a request to another script, and that script has the sleep() in it. Okay, well the curl CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT (or _MS) setting is to tell curl how long to wait around for a response from the requested server - as in, a connection made. When the curl request is made, it is getting a response that a connection was made...then the sleep() is just delaying the output it's giving. So basically, "wait for a response" is not the same as "how long to timeout the curl execution"

What you want to use is CURLOPT_TIMEOUT or CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS

edited Jul 23, 2011 at 17:21

answered Jul 23, 2011 at 16:52

CrayonViolent

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2 Comments

Betamos Over a year ago

Thanks for the side notes, interesting. However, I think you misinterpreted my question, so I edited it. It is a separate script that responds which contains the sleep() statement.

Betamos Over a year ago

I am still surprised by the result, but the same problem occurs. I tried CURLOPT_TIMEOUT both with and without _MS. It waits for 5 seconds and then results in a 200 OK. Can it be something else in the setup?

j0k · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-28 11:53:36Z

3

Well, I had the same problem and wasted so much time looking for the solution and found a working solution at the end.

I though I should share it here and this might be helpful for someone in future.

I have simply used both options. I have used 4 seconds and 8 seconds respectively.

curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 4);
curl_setopt($curl_session, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 8);

edited Jun 28, 2012 at 11:53

j0k

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answered Jun 28, 2012 at 10:58

Migara

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