Is there a standard Scala function for running a block with a timeout?

Question

I need to call into a service that may or not return timely results. I\'d like to be able to write

val result = runWithTimeout(5000, valReturnedOnTimeout) {         


        

Answer 1

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet is awaitEither, a method on the actors package's Futures object. awaitEither returns the result from the first of a pair of futures to complete, so for example something like this could be used:

awaitEither(future{task}, alarm(timeoutPeriod))

and then dressed up in a method as suggested:

def runWithTimeout[T](timeoutPeriod: Int, timeoutValue: T)(task: => T) = {
  awaitEither(future{task}, alarm(timeoutPeriod)) match {case () => timeoutValue case x => x}
}

alarm returns Unit which is assignable to a val of type Any so awaitEither returns something that can be pattern matched against.