How to Timeout a request using Html Agility Pack

Question

I\'m making a request to a remote web server that is currently offline (on purpose).

I\'d like to figure out the best way to time out the request. Basically if the

Answer 1

I had to make a small adjustment to my originally posted code

    public JsonpResult About(string HomePageUrl)
    {
        Models.Pocos.About about = null;
        // ************* CHANGE HERE - added "timeout in milliseconds" to RemoteFileExists extension method.
        if (HomePageUrl.RemoteFileExists(1000))
        {
            // Using the Html Agility Pack, we want to extract only the
            // appropriate data from the remote page.
            HtmlWeb hw = new HtmlWeb();
            HtmlDocument doc = hw.Load(HomePageUrl);
            HtmlNode node = doc.DocumentNode.SelectSingleNode("//div[@class='wrapper1-border']");

            if (node != null)
            { 
                about = new Models.Pocos.About { html = node.InnerHtml };
            }
                //todo: look into whether this else statement is necessary
            else 
            {
                about = null;
            }
        }

        return this.Jsonp(about);
    }

Then I modified my RemoteFileExists extension method to have a timeout

    public static bool RemoteFileExists(this string url, int timeout)
    {
        try
        {
            //Creating the HttpWebRequest
            HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;

            // ************ ADDED HERE
            // timeout the request after x milliseconds
            request.Timeout = timeout;
            // ************

            //Setting the Request method HEAD, you can also use GET too.
            request.Method = "HEAD";
            //Getting the Web Response.
            HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;
            //Returns TRUE if the Status code == 200
            return (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK);
        }
        catch
        {
            //Any exception will returns false.
            return false;
        }
    }

In this approach, if my timeout fires before RemoteFileExists can determine the header response, then my bool will return false.