Transport Timeout Errors

[SamHurne]

[Moved from Codeplex: https://gw2dotnet.codeplex.com/workitem/1216]

When a timeout occurs, the default behavior is to throw a System.Net.WebException. Would it make sense to throw a System.TimeoutException instead? Timeouts are not as extreme as most other transport errors, and are usually caused by network congestion instead of a bad network configuration.

Ruhrpottpatriot wrote Aug 10, 2014 at 8:10 AM

I think it'd be best to throw a WebException with a TimeoutException being the inner exception

StevenLiekens wrote Aug 10, 2014 at 9:05 AM

We can't throw a new WebException and also preserve the original exception details that were generated by the framework. But we can catch the source WebException and wrap it in a new TimeoutException. So client code would look like this:

try
{
   // Talk to the service service.GetBuild();
} 
catch (ServiceException ex)
{ 
   // Handle errors generated by the server
}
catch (TimeoutException ex)
{ 
   // Handle timeouts
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
   // Handle fatal errors
}