[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #31184: Plugin update API times out too easily in practice, and is not handled gracefully

[WordPress Trac]

#31184: Plugin update API times out too easily in practice, and is not handled
gracefully
--------------------------+-----------------------------
 Reporter:  rkaiser0324   |      Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Plugins       |    Version:  4.1
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                |
--------------------------+-----------------------------
 In wp_update_plugins() the timeout is set to "Three seconds, plus one
 extra second for every 10 plugins" when not doing a cron job.  I did some
 testing (with reasonable bandwidth) and in practice I need about twice
 that to be safe.  I realize you need to arbitrarily choose something, but
 the problem is that if timeouts do occur, there are unhandled warnings
 like

  Warning: An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with
 WordPress.org or this server’s configuration. If you continue to
 have problems, please try the <a
 href="https://wordpress.org/support/">support forums</a>. (WordPress could
 not establish a secure connection to WordPress.org. Please contact your
 server administrator.) in
 /media/sf_shared/digipowers/www.digipowers.com/httpdocs/wp-
 includes/update.php on line 297

 which doesn't alert you to the real problem, which is that
 api.wordpress.com took too long to resolve.

 To repro this, clear your transients to force an update check, and then
 force the timeout in class-http.php:96 to something short like 1s:


 {{{
                         /**
                          * Filter the timeout value for an HTTP request.
                          *
                          * @since 2.7.0
                          *
                          * @param int $timeout_value Time in seconds until
 a request times out.
                          *                           Default 5.
                          */
                         'timeout' => 1, //apply_filters(
 'http_request_timeout', 5 ),
 }}}


 Recommend you do 2 things:
 1) increase the default timeout for the plugin check from say 5 to 10.
 2) handle this condition more gracefully by stating what's wrong in this
 case, e.g., : "WordPress could not connect to the API server to check for
 plugin updates; please try again later.".  And needless to say, don't
 throw PHP warnings as they break the headers if you have error_reporting
 and display_errors set to be loud.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/31184>
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