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!
![Camera and Video Control with HTML5]()
Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs. Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop. One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...
![Creating Scrolling Parallax Effects with CSS]()
Introduction
For quite a long time now websites with the so called "parallax" effect have been really popular.
In case you have not heard of this effect, it basically includes different layers of images that are moving in different directions or with different speed. This leads to a...
![LightFace: Facebook Lightbox for MooTools]()
One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog. This "lightbox" isn't like others: no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much." With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace: a Facebook lightbox...
![Page Visibility API]()
One event that's always been lacking within the document is a signal for when the user is looking at a given tab, or another tab. When does the user switch off our site to look at something else? When do they come back?
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)