Popular:
 Building Resilient Systems on AWS: Learn how to design and implement a resilient, highly available, fault-tolerant infrastructure on AWS.

How to Simulate Long HTTP Requests

By  on  

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!

Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Redacted Font

    Back when I created client websites, one of the many things that frustrated me was the initial design handoff.  It would always go like this: Work hard to incorporate client's ideas, dream up awesome design. Create said design, using Lorem Ipsum text Send initial design concept to the client...

  • By
    Introducing MooTools Dotter

    It's best practice to provide an indicator of some sort when performing an AJAX request or processing that takes place in the background. Since the dawn of AJAX, we've been using colorful spinners and imagery as indicators. While I enjoy those images, I am...

Discussion

  1. Trevor

    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.

  2. Charlie

    Thanks David always love your content.
    Although in this particular case i fail to understand a practical use, could you share an example?

    thanks !

  3. Dima

    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)

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!