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fix(http): expand retry budget + use exponential backoff on DNS failure

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Transient DNS resolution failures (socket.gaierror, surfaced as
urllib.error.URLError with reason=gaierror) were retried with the
generic URLError handler — linear backoff (2s, 4s, 6s) and bounded by
the caller-passed `retries` parameter. For callers that pass small
retry values (e.g. lib/reddit.py::_subreddit_search uses retries=2), a
single first-attempt DNS hiccup followed by one quick retry on the
still-flaky resolver would exhaust the retry budget and wipe a whole
subreddit sweep — which the caller's broad `except Exception` then
silent-empties as `[]`.

Fix:
- Distinguish URLError-with-gaierror-reason from generic URLError via
  a new `_is_dns_failure()` helper.
- For DNS failures, use exponential backoff (1s, 2s, 4s, ...) instead
  of the linear default.
- For DNS failures, expand the effective retry budget to at least
  MIN_DNS_RETRIES (=3) on first occurrence, so callers that passed
  `retries=2` still get a meaningful retry budget for the transient
  case. Non-DNS URLErrors and HTTPErrors keep the caller's value.
- DNS attempts are counted separately (`dns_attempts`) so unrelated
  URLError or OSError failures within the same call don't accidentally
  expand the budget further.

Reported during a community-signal pass where the Reddit subreddit
sweep silently returned zero items after a first-round transient DNS
hiccup. The fix lives at the http layer (where the retry loop is)
rather than per-source so every caller benefits.

Tests:
- Verifies a caller-passed retries=2 still gets MIN_DNS_RETRIES=3
  attempts on gaierror.
- Verifies gaierror-then-success returns successfully on attempt 2.
- Verifies the exponential-backoff sleep pattern (1s, 2s) on the
  retry attempts before exhaustion.
- Verifies a non-DNS URLError (ConnectionRefusedError reason) does
  NOT expand the retry budget — only true DNS failures do.

All 12 http tests pass (8 baseline + 4 new). No regressions in the
broader test suite (1373 pass / 14 fail, vs 1369 pass / 14 fail on
main — the 14 failures are pre-existing and unrelated to this PR).
This commit is contained in:
Gabriel Arrillaga
2026-05-12 21:02:08 -05:00
committed by Trevin Chow
parent 602de1ebda
commit 5a2fe5279b
2 changed files with 120 additions and 5 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files
skills/last30days/scripts/lib/http.py
+44 -5
View File
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
import json
import re
import socket
import sys
import time
import urllib.error
@@ -22,9 +23,19 @@ def log(msg: str):
MAX_RETRIES = 5
MAX_429_RETRIES = 2
RETRY_DELAY = 2.0
# DNS resolution failures (gaierror) are transient — typically resolved by a
# brief backoff and retry. Use a dedicated minimum attempt count + exponential
# delays (1s, 2s, 4s) so callers that pass a small `retries` value still get a
# meaningful chance to recover from a transient resolution failure.
MIN_DNS_RETRIES = 3
USER_AGENT = "last30days-skill/3.0 (Assistant Skill)"
def _is_dns_failure(err: urllib.error.URLError) -> bool:
"""Return True if a URLError was caused by DNS resolution (gaierror)."""
return isinstance(getattr(err, "reason", None), socket.gaierror)
class HTTPError(Exception):
"""HTTP request error with status code."""
def __init__(self, message: str, status_code: Optional[int] = None, body: Optional[str] = None):
@@ -85,7 +96,13 @@ def request(
last_error = None
rate_limit_count = 0
for attempt in range(retries):
# DNS failures get a dedicated minimum attempt count + exponential backoff.
# `effective_retries` is the actual loop bound; we expand it on the first
# gaierror if the caller passed a smaller `retries` value than MIN_DNS_RETRIES.
effective_retries = retries
dns_attempts = 0
attempt = 0
while attempt < effective_retries:
try:
with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=timeout) as response:
body = response.read().decode('utf-8')
@@ -115,7 +132,7 @@ def request(
if rate_limit_count >= max_429_retries:
raise last_error
if attempt < retries - 1:
if attempt < effective_retries - 1:
if e.code == 429:
# Respect Retry-After header, fall back to exponential backoff
retry_after = e.headers.get("Retry-After") if hasattr(e, 'headers') else None
@@ -126,14 +143,34 @@ def request(
delay = RETRY_DELAY * (2 ** attempt) + 1
else:
delay = RETRY_DELAY * (2 ** attempt) + 1 # 3s, 5s, 9s...
log(f"Rate limited (429). Waiting {delay:.1f}s before retry {attempt + 2}/{retries}")
log(f"Rate limited (429). Waiting {delay:.1f}s before retry {attempt + 2}/{effective_retries}")
else:
delay = RETRY_DELAY * (2 ** attempt)
time.sleep(delay)
except urllib.error.URLError as e:
log(f"URL Error: {e.reason}")
last_error = HTTPError(f"URL Error: {e.reason}")
if attempt < retries - 1:
if _is_dns_failure(e):
# DNS resolution failures are transient; expand the retry budget
# to MIN_DNS_RETRIES if the caller passed fewer, and use
# exponential backoff (1s, 2s, 4s, ...) instead of the linear
# default. Counts DNS attempts separately so other URLError
# causes don't bypass the regular retry budget.
dns_attempts += 1
if effective_retries < MIN_DNS_RETRIES:
log(
f"DNS resolution failed; expanding retry budget from "
f"{effective_retries} to {MIN_DNS_RETRIES}"
)
effective_retries = MIN_DNS_RETRIES
if attempt < effective_retries - 1:
delay = 2 ** (dns_attempts - 1) # 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, ...
log(
f"DNS resolution failure (attempt {dns_attempts}); "
f"retrying in {delay:.1f}s"
)
time.sleep(delay)
elif attempt < effective_retries - 1:
time.sleep(RETRY_DELAY * (attempt + 1))
except json.JSONDecodeError as e:
log(f"JSON decode error: {e}")
@@ -143,9 +180,11 @@ def request(
# Handle socket-level errors (connection reset, timeout, etc.)
log(f"Connection error: {type(e).__name__}: {e}")
last_error = HTTPError(f"Connection error: {type(e).__name__}: {e}")
if attempt < retries - 1:
if attempt < effective_retries - 1:
time.sleep(RETRY_DELAY * (attempt + 1))
attempt += 1
if last_error:
raise last_error
raise HTTPError("Request failed with no error details")