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What Is a Timeout Strategy?#

How long should the browser wait and keep retrying to interact with an element: 5, 10, or 20 seconds? And what happens when a function times out: Should the browser stop or continue its operation?

Learn how to set the best timeout strategy for the needs and context of your automation workflow.

Settings and Strategy#

TimeoutSettings defines the TimeoutStrategy together with a general timeout in seconds. For example:

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from browserist import TimeoutSettings, TimeoutStrategy

timeout_settings = TimeoutSettings(
    strategy=TimeoutStrategy.CONTINUE,
    seconds=10)

Tip

The general timeout can often be shortened or lengthened by the function-specific timeout. It's recommended to keep the default of 5 seconds or to set the general timeout to a value that's sufficient for most functions – most methods run faster anyway – and then override it for specific functions.

Options for TimeoutSettings#

Parameter Description
seconds General timeout and default is 5 seconds. Note that a function-specific timeout overrides this.
strategy TimeoutStrategy.STOP (default) or TimeoutStrategy.CONTINUE.

Options for TimeoutStrategy#

Option Description
TimeoutStrategy.STOP Default. Fail fast upon timeout and raise errors.
TimeoutStrategy.CONTINUE Continue despite timeouts and most errors (syntax errors excluded).

Example#

How to define a general strategy and timeout of 10 seconds for all functions, which we then override to 5 seconds for a specific function:

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from browserist import Browser, BrowserSettings, TimeoutSettings, TimeoutStrategy

timeout_settings = TimeoutSettings(
    strategy=TimeoutStrategy.CONTINUE,
    seconds=10)

settings = BrowserSettings(timeout=timeout_settings)

with Browser(settings) as browser:
    browser.open.url("https://example.com")
    headline = browser.get.text("//h1", timeout=5)
    print(headline)