Ever wanted to know what the request timeout is for the currently-running ColdFusion request? The static 'getRequestTimeout()' method on the 'coldfusion.runtime.RequestMonitor' class knows. Tested to work on both CF7 and CF8.
Why might you want to know? So you can set a request timeout, but only if it's not lower than what is already set. Specific use case: I have a method that imports a data file and it takes a while, so I set a 120 second timeout. But I also have a method that imports a directory of data files, and want to set the timeout to quite a bit longer. Of course, the later method calls the former, and I don't want the former to be lowering the timeout I just set to allow for multiple files. So instead of this:
<cfsetting requesttimeout="120" />
I can do this instead:
<cfset monitor = createObject("java", "coldfusion.runtime.RequestMonitor") />
<cfsetting requesttimeout="#max(monitor.getRequestTimeout(), 120)#" />
and ensure that the timeout is a least 120 seconds, but let it stay higher if it already is. Or, in handy UDF form:
<cfset requestMonitor = createObject("java", "coldfusion.runtime.RequestMonitor") />
<cffunction name="requireRequestTimeout" access="private" output="false" return="boolean"
 hint="I ensure the request timeout is at least what is specified, and return
   whether or not the timeout was increased by this call.">
 <cfargument name="timeout" type="numeric" required="true" />
 <cfif timeout GT requestMonitor.getRequestTimeout()>
   <cfsetting requesttimeout="#timeout#" />
   <cfreturn true />
 </cfif>
 <cfreturn false />
</cffunction>
Barney, this is wicked cool! This would totally jive well with my ideas on disaster recovery:
http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:660.view
There, I am randomly picking a new requesttimeout, but it would be so much better to actually have an existing time to work from. Thanks!
Ben,
Good call. Error handling a timeout error (specifically cleaning up in-use resources) is rather a pain, because almost any tag you run does a timeout check first, and so you can't do anything. But just extending the timeout by "a bit" would be a perfect way to get around it. Hadn't thought about that use case.
I am gonna include this in a post on monday. Thanks!
[...] card, it was reset down to just 300 seconds and so my batch processing would time out. Thanks to a clever but woefully named post by Barney Boisvert, getting the request timeout of the current context is super [...]