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C# 10 HttpClient Timeout Behavior in Asynchronous Calls Causing Unexpected Results

👀 Views: 31 đŸ’Ŧ Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-07
c# httpclient asynchronous timeout C#

I'm trying to figure out I've been researching this but I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm encountering an issue with the `HttpClient` class in C# 10 that seems to stem from the timeout configuration when making asynchronous calls. I have a method that fetches data from an external API, and I set the timeout to 2 seconds. However, it seems that under certain network conditions, the call is not timing out as expected, and I receive a response after up to 5 seconds instead. Here's the relevant code snippet: ```csharp public async Task<string> FetchDataAsync(string url) { using (var client = new HttpClient()) { client.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2); try { var response = await client.GetAsync(url); response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode(); return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(); } catch (TaskCanceledException ex) // TimeoutException not caught { // This block is entered only when the timeout is reached. Console.WriteLine("Request timed out."); return null; } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); return null; } } } ``` I've tried using both `GetAsync` and `SendAsync` but the behavior remains the same. The `TaskCanceledException` is caught correctly when it times out, but it appears that the request sometimes completes after the timeout period without throwing this exception. I also verified that the server I'm querying does not have any long-running processes that would explain this behavior. I suspect there might be some underlying buffering or the way the underlying sockets handle the connections that could be causing this. Is there a known issue with `HttpClient` timeout handling, or am I missing any best practices for configuring the `HttpClient` in a way that guarantees a strict timeout behavior? Any insights would be highly appreciated! My development environment is Ubuntu. What am I doing wrong? My development environment is Ubuntu 22.04. Any advice would be much appreciated. I'd be grateful for any help. I'm working in a Ubuntu 20.04 environment. Thanks for taking the time to read this!