Increase timeout on GeoEvent input

Question

I have an input that polls an ArcGIS Server for features that takes longer than 30 seconds, and it appears that GeoEvent is timing out and never processing the input. Is there a way to increase a default timeout on a particular input? I don't see any options in the GeoEvent admin interface.

ChrisCarter3 · Answer

Thank you for the detailed info. I haven't been able to get my custom connector to receive any data yet, but I'll keep working on it.

GregoryChristakos · Answer

Hi @ChrisCarter3 - Understood! The "Poll an ArcGIS Server for Features" input connector that is available out of the box does not have a property that controls the timeout. This is primarily because the "FeatureService" transport that the aforementioned connector uses doesn't have that property as something you can expose. This is true even if you created your own custom copy of the connector via Manager > Site > Connectors, and then tried to tweak the settings.

I'm assuming my colleague @EricIronside was either referring to 1) increasing the polling interval, or 2) using a custom connector whose transport is not "FeatureService", but instead a different transport that exposes a property for influencing the client side timeout.

If you're interested in the latter scenario, you could create your own custom connector via GeoEvent Manager that pairs the JSON adaptor with the HTTP transport (rather than the FeatureServer transport). It's a bit of an unorthodox workflow, but you should be able to make a query against your feature service with a bit more effort. Most importantly, the HTTP transport does expose the HTTPtimeoutvalue property.

I tested this on my end (manager > site > connectors > create new connector). I set the type to "input", the adapter to "JSON", and the transport to "HTTP". You can configure whichever properties you want shown/hidden, but the key thing to note in the list of options is that there's a "HTTP Timeout (in seconds)" property now. I called my custom connector "Poll a Feature Service for Esri Feature JSON" but you can call yours whatever you'd like. Once you finish creating this connector, go through the process of adding it as a new input for configuration & use.

The reason I said this is an unorthodox workflow & requires a bit more effort is because you'll need to provide the URL to the feature service you want to query along with the full query string, token, and whatever else might be needed. For example, this is part of what I provided in the URL parameter: "https://<my_geoevent_server>:6443/arcgis/rest/services/SampleWorldCities/MapServer/0/query?where=1=1&text=&objectIds=&time=&timeRelation=... ... ...etc etc". A good way to obtain this URL is to perform the query yourself at REST, ensuring that the format returned is set to JSON. Copy the full encoded URL and provide that in the URL parameter. I also needed to specify the acceptable MIME type as "application/JSON". Your URL, parameters, and more, will vary.

The FeatureService and HTTP transports both allow you to make a HTTP request to a feature service, but where the FeatureService transport is specifically geared for navigating ArcGIS server's and querying services natively with little effort, the HTTP transport is more general for querying any sort of REST endpoint / API and so it requires more leg work to use with feature service queries.

ChrisCarter3 · Answer

Hi @GregoryChristakos - Thank you for the reply. The input is indeed a Feature Service, and if I run the query through the REST endpoint, it takes about 1 minute 15 seconds to return all the data. The service timeout on the feature service is 600 seconds so I don't think that's the problem.

@EricIronside mentioned a possible "GeoEvent input timeout" setting in this thread: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-geoevent-server-questions/connecting-geoevent-to-a-postgresql-view-table/td-p/1059369