How to Simulate Long HTTP Requests
It happens less frequently these days but there are times when we need to accommodate for a HTTP request timing out. The service could be down, under heavy traffic, or just poorly coded, or any host of other issues.
Whenever I need to simulate a long HTTP request, I use a bit of PHP to make it happen:
<?php
// Don't resolve this request for 5 seconds
sleep(5);
// A generic response
echo 'This is the response!';
// ... or hit a URL to make the case more realistic
echo file_get_contents('https://website.tld/endpoint');
?>
With that script created, I make PHP start a server so I can make the request locally:
php -S localhost:8000
Now I can hit http://localhost:8000 and get the long request I want!
There are a number of ways you can accomplish these long form requests but this has always been a favorite of mine!
![5 Ways that CSS and JavaScript Interact That You May Not Know About]()
CSS and JavaScript: the lines seemingly get blurred by each browser release. They have always done a very different job but in the end they are both front-end technologies so they need do need to work closely. We have our .js files and our .css, but...
![9 Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos]()
As much as developers now loathe Flash, we're still playing a bit of catch up to natively duplicate the animation capabilities that Adobe's old technology provided us. Of course we have canvas, an awesome technology, one which I highlighted 9 mind-blowing demos. Another technology available...
![Control Element Outline Position with outline-offset]()
I was recently working on a project which featured tables that were keyboard navigable so obviously using cell outlining via traditional tabIndex=0 and element outlines was a big part of allowing the user navigate quickly and intelligently. Unfortunately I ran into a Firefox 3.6 bug...
![Unicode CSS Classes]()
CSS class name structure and consistency is really important; some developers camelcase classnames, others use dashes, and others use underscores. One thing I've learned when toying around by HTML and CSS class names is that you can actually use unicode symbols and icons as classnames.
That’s cool! Thanks for the tip.
I could see having it take a query param to set the sleep time arbitrarily for different scenarios you’re simulating.
Thanks David always love your content.
Although in this particular case i fail to understand a practical use, could you share an example?
thanks !
And here is concise way to do it in NodeJs, the server will wait for 3 seconds before response:
const http = require('http') const server = http.createServer((req, res) => { setTimeout(() => { res.writeHead(200) res.end('Hello, World!') }, 3000) }) server.listen(8080)