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CURLOPT_TIMEOUT

Section: curl_easy_setopt options (3)
Updated: February 03, 2016
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NAME

CURLOPT_TIMEOUT - set maximum time the request is allowed to take

SYNOPSIS

CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, long timeout);

DESCRIPTION

Pass a long as parameter containing timeout - the maximum time in seconds that you allow the libcurl transfer operation to take. Normally, name lookups can take a considerable time and limiting operations to less than a few minutes risk aborting perfectly normal operations. This option may cause libcurl to use the SIGALRM signal to timeout system calls.

In unix-like systems, this might cause signals to be used unless CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL(3) is set.

If both CURLOPT_TIMEOUT(3) and CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS(3) are set, the value set last will be used.

Since this puts a hard limit for how long time a request is allowed to take, it has limited use in dynamic use cases with varying transfer times. You are then advised to explore CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT(3), CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_TIME(3) or using CURLOPT_PROGRESSFUNCTION(3) to implement your own timeout logic.

DEFAULT

Default timeout is 0 (zero) which means it never times out during transfer.

PROTOCOLS

All

EXAMPLE

CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
if(curl) {
  curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://example.com");

  /* complete within 20 seconds */
  curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 20L);

  curl_easy_perform(curl);
}

AVAILABILITY

Always

RETURN VALUE

Returns CURLE_OK