HTTP requests.post timeout

Question

In my code below, I use requests.post. What are the possibilities to simply continue if the site is down?

I have the following code:

def post_test():

    import requests

    url = 'http://example.com:8000/submit'
    payload = {'data1': 1, 'data2': 2}
    try:
        r = requests.post(url, data=payload)
    except:
        return   # if the requests.post fails (eg. the site is down) I want simly to return from the post_test(). Currenly it hangs up in the requests.post without raising an error.
    if (r.text == 'stop'):
        sys.exit()  # I want to terminate the whole program if r.text = 'stop' - this works fine.

How could I make the requests.post timeout, or return from post_test() if example.com, or its /submit app is down?

Answer 1

All requests take a timeout keyword argument. ¹

The requests.post is simply forwarding its arguments to requests.request ²

When the app is down, a ConnectionError is more likely than a Timeout. ³

try:
    requests.post(url, data=payload, timeout=5)
except requests.Timeout:
    # back off and retry
    pass
except requests.ConnectionError:
    pass