:ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE after two minutes timeout -axios-post - nodejs - node.js

Question

I'm trying do make an upload of a file in a nodejs / react application.
The upload of the file work well, but I have some issues when I want to have the response of my await.post() request. When I upload the file I have made a spinner to show that the file is uploading, and I want this spinner to stop when the upload is finish and then display a message to inform the user that the loading is finish.
I explain the problems, because it's a little bit complicated.
When i work in local :
After two minutes (I timed it to understand), the console of my browser display the error message net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE.
But in server side everything continue and the request ended without a hitch. But in front side my spinner never stop turning even when the request is over and when my post request is sending the res message to my client side.
I thought this was about the timeout of my server, so I've done a lot of test, by putting setTimeout in my server :
var server = app.listen(PORT, () =>
console.log(`Server started on port ${PORT}`)
);
server.timeout = 3840000;
And also in my route request :
router.post('/', async (req, res) => {
req.setTimeout(3600000);
And even i try to change the timeout of my axios.post function in the client side :
const res = await axios.post('/api/students', newFile, {
timeout: 3600000,
});
But nothing handle my problem.
And what is strange is that when the application is hosted, the problem is different!
In fact there are no error message but after 1 minutes the spinner stop with no reason.
I have made a lot of research but nothing answer my problem, it's been a few day now that i'm on it and i don't understand why. I thought maybe it's a proxy problem or a browser timeout, but I don't know...
If you have even a small lead, it could help me a lot! Thank you for your help !
UPDATE :
The code of my /api/student route
const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
const fileUpload = require('express-fileupload');
const Student = require('../../models/Student');
const CSVToJSON = require('csvtojson');
const utf8 = require('utf8');
var accents = require('remove-accents');
const NodeGeocoder = require('node-geocoder');
const sleep = require('util').promisify(setTimeout);
let msg = 'Etudiants ajoutés à la base de données';
//The column that we want to keep in the database
const goodColumn = [
'Civilite',
'Nom_patronymique',
'Prenom',
'Date_naissance',
'No_etudiant',
'Libelle_nationalite',
'Telephone_portable',
'Mailum',
'Adresse_fixe_postal',
'Adresse_fixe_ville',
'Libelle_etape',
];
// Set up the environnement for geocoding the adress
const options = {
provider: 'openstreetmap',
};
const geoCoder = NodeGeocoder(options);
//FUNCTION TO VERIFY IF A STRING HAS A NUMBER IN IT
function hasNumber(myString) {
return /\d/.test(myString);
}
router.post('/', (req, res, next) => {
// This should be BEFORE `fileUpload`
req.setTimeout(0);
next();
});
router.use(fileUpload());
//#route POST api/students
//#desc Fill the database with the json information
//#access Public
router.post('/', async (req, res, next) => {
//FORMER FILES ROUTES
//take the information
const buf = Buffer.from(req.files.file.data).toString();
//CONVERSION CSV STRING TO JSON
CSVToJSON()
.fromString(buf)
.then((source) => {
for (let i = 0; i < source.length; i++) {
for (let j = 0; j < Object.keys(source[i]).length; j++) {
const columnName = Object.keys(source[i]);
columnName.forEach((element) => {
if (!goodColumn.includes(element)) {
delete source[i][element];
}
if (element == 'Libelle_etape') {
const str = source[i]['Libelle_etape'];
const result = accents.remove(utf8.decode(str));
source[i]['Libelle_etape'] = result;
}
});
}
}
data = JSON.stringify(source);
datajson = JSON.parse(data);
//USE THE FUNCTION TO PUT THE DATA IN THE DB
insertIntoDataBase(datajson);
});
// CLEAR TABLE BEFORE ADD NEW STUDENTS FROM FILE
Student.deleteMany({}, function (err) {});
//ROUTES STUDENTS - FUNCTION TO PUT THE JSON DATA IN THE DATABASE
async function insertIntoDataBase(jsonString) {
for (let i = 0; i < jsonString.length; i++) {
console.log(`boucle ${i}`);
try {
//READ DATA FROM DE CSV FILE (already convert into json data) AND PUT IT INTO VARIABLES
let {
Civilite,
Nom_patronymique,
Prenom,
Date_naissance,
No_etudiant,
Libelle_nationalite,
Telephone_portable,
Mailum,
Adresse_fixe_postal,
Adresse_fixe_ville,
Libelle_etape,
} = jsonString[i];
console.log(Nom_patronymique + ' ' + Prenom);
// VERIFICATION VILLE STRING FORMAT ( AVOIR NUMBER OR ..EME)
if (hasNumber(Adresse_fixe_ville)) {
Adresse_fixe_ville = Adresse_fixe_ville.replace(/[0-9]/g, '');
if (Adresse_fixe_ville.endsWith(' EME')) {
Adresse_fixe_ville = Adresse_fixe_ville.substring(
0,
Adresse_fixe_ville.length - 4
);
}
}
//VERIFICATION OF THE PHONE NUMBER - if empty attributes a default value
if (Telephone_portable !== undefined && Telephone_portable.length < 1) {
Telephone_portable = '0000000000';
}
// GEOCODING THE ADDRESS TO CONVERT INTO LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE
geoCoder
.geocode({
city: Adresse_fixe_ville,
zipcode: Adresse_fixe_postal,
})
.then(async (res) => {
//TEST
var Latitude;
var Longitude;
if (res[0] !== undefined) {
Latitude = res[0].latitude;
Longitude = res[0].longitude;
} else {
console.log(Adresse_fixe_ville);
Latitude = 0.0;
Longitude = 0.0;
}
//CREATE A STUDENT WITH THE INFO + LAT AND LONG
student = new Student({
Civilite,
Nom_patronymique,
Prenom,
Date_naissance,
No_etudiant,
Libelle_nationalite,
Telephone_portable,
Mailum,
Adresse_fixe_postal,
Adresse_fixe_ville,
Libelle_etape,
Latitude,
Longitude,
});
//VERIFICATION IF ALL THE ATTRIBUTE OF THE STUDENT ARE OK - IF NOT : undefined
if (
!(
student.Civilite === undefined ||
student.Nom_patronymique === undefined ||
student.Prenom === undefined ||
student.Date_naissance === undefined ||
student.No_etudiant === undefined ||
student.Libelle_nationalite === undefined ||
student.Telephone_portable === undefined ||
student.Mailum === undefined ||
student.Adresse_fixe_postal === undefined ||
student.Adresse_fixe_ville === undefined ||
student.Libelle_etape === undefined
)
) {
//SAVE THE STUDENT IN THE DATABASE
await student.save();
} else {
res.status(500);
msg =
'Le fichier csv téléchargé est au mauvais format de données';
}
})
.catch((err) => {
console.log(err);
});
} catch (err) {
console.log(err.message);
res.status(500);
msg =
'Erreur serveur, veuillez réessayer avec un fichier csv au bon format';
return;
}
//WAIT FOR GEOCODER - 1,2 second
await sleep(1200);
}
//COUNT A MANY STUDENT WE HAVE IN THE DATABASE
Student.find().exec(function (err, results) {
var count = results.length;
res.json({ msg: msg, count: count });
});
}
});
//#route GET api/students
//#desc Return all the students in the database (all information / attributes)
//#access Public
router.get('/', function (req, res, next) {
Student.find(function (err, students) {
if (err) {
res.send(err);
}
res.json(students);
});
});
module.exports = router;

Answer 1

In Node < 13.0.0 the default socket timeout is 2 minutes, so after two minutes the socket will be closed and you'll get ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE on the client-side since the socket was closed without allowing you to respond to that request.
From Node 13.0.0 the default timeout was set to 0 (no timeout), and that's maybe the reason it works when you deployed the application, your server may be running Node >= 13.0.0.
If after using req.setTimeout with a value greater to 2 minutes, and you still have that issue, it may be caused because you're not ending the request correctly or you have used req.setTimeout in the wrong place.
It a huge file, it's a csv with 1300 ligne, it's take approximatly
30min to upload
From your comment, I can tell you that the req.setTimeout you have in your route is not doing what you want, because you have a middleware before that, probably multer from seeing at your code that is not setting the req.setTimeout to >30 min.
So the request is timing out before it reaches your route. You should do something like this:
app.post(
'/',
(req, res, next) => {
// Set request setTimeout BEFORE any other middlewares
req.setTimeout(ms('35m')); // using `ms` package
next();
},
upload.single('file'), // or whatever multer setup you have
(req, res, next) => {
// Your route
}
)
With this code, you have 35 minutes to upload & end your response, since it won't timeout at multer middleware after 2 minutes. Of course if you don't know how much time it will take, most likely the case, you can use req.setTimeout(0) or whatever value you consider appropiate.
Update
For your code, you'll have to do the following:
// or router.use((req, res, next) => ...)
router.post('/', (req, res, next) => {
// This should be BEFORE `fileUpload`
req.setTimeout(0);
next();
});
router.use(fileUpload());
//#route POST api/students
//#desc Fill the database with the json information
//#access Public
router.post('/', async (req, res, next) => {
// ...rest of your code
})