ASP.NET - Set WebStream to Timeout

[poe]

Hello,

I currently have a routine that copies the contents of a web request into a string. I would like, however, to set the period after which the reader will throw an exception. I don't want my users to wait 300 seconds, instead I would rather have an exception thrown and the user notified of the service essentially being down. Here is what I've come up with, but it doesn't seem to timeout correctly. Any suggestions?

Assume any variables starting with _ are class level and have been configured properly. The _RequestTimeout variable is set to 1.

    Private Function GetWebPage(ByVal URL As String) As String
        Dim Response As String = String.Empty
        Dim WebReader As StreamReader
        Dim WebStream As Stream
 
        Try
            '-- Download and read web page
            WebStream = _Request.OpenRead(URL)
 
            '-- Set timeout on read for the default of 10 seconds or a user specified amount
            WebStream.ReadTimeout = Me._RequestTimeout
 
            '-- Read web stream
            WebReader = New StreamReader(WebStream)
            Response = WebReader.ReadToEnd()
 
        Catch ex As Exception
            Throw New Exception(ex.Message)
        Finally
            '-- Release memory
            WebReader = Nothing
        End Try
 
 
        Return Response
End Function

[Plater]

So you want it to keep reading until it finishes or X amount of seconds has ellapsed, whatever comes first?

[poe]

Correct.

I have an aspx page that is called via Ajax from an old asp page as a part of the form submission for the asp page; the Ajax portion is not 100% necessary, so if it takes too long to complete, I just want to skip over it. My users have complained that "it doesn't do anything" but they're just not willing to wait long enough, so I have to work around it.

[Plater]

Well I think Response.End() forces the page to stop executing code?
So do a check to see if X amount of seconds has passed and then kill off the page?

[poe]

Just to update. I was able to change from using the WebRequest to using an HttpWebRequest. New in .Net 2.0 is the Timeout member which allows you to specify an amount of time after which an exception is thrown. The neat thing it that HttpWebRequest inherits from WebRequest so the change was minimal.

[Plater]

I had been wondering why you weren't using those, but figured I didn't understand the scope of your application.