Handling Acumatica timeout on API Invoke action - acumatica

Question

I have code in a standalone application that invokes an Acumatica action to generate reports; I am running into timeouts on large documents while the action completes.
What is the best method to handle these timeouts? I need to wait for the action to complete in order to retrieve the files I've generated.
Standalone application code:
public SalesOrder GenerateAcumaticaLabels(string orderNbr, string reportType)
{
SalesOrder salesOrder = null;
using (ISoapClientProvider clientProvider = soapClientFactory.Create())
{
try
{
SalesOrder salesOrderToFind = new SalesOrder
{
OrderType = new StringSearch { Value = orderNbr.Split(OrderSeparator.SalesOrder).First() },
OrderNbr = new StringSearch { Value = orderNbr.Split(OrderSeparator.SalesOrder).Last() },
ReturnBehavior = ReturnBehavior.OnlySpecified,
};
salesOrder = clientProvider.Client.Get(salesOrderToFind) as SalesOrder;
InvokeResult invokeResult = new InvokeResult();
invokeResult = clientProvider.Client.Invoke(salesOrder, new exportSFPReport());
ProcessResult processResult = clientProvider.Client.GetProcessStatus(invokeResult);
//Wait for the update to complete before we attempt to retrieve the files
while (processResult.Status == ProcessStatus.InProcess)
{
Thread.Sleep(1000); //pause for 1 second
processResult = clientProvider.Client.GetProcessStatus(invokeResult);
}
}
And the action in Acumatica:
public PXAction<SOOrder> ExportSFPReport;
[PXButton]
[PXUIField(DisplayName = "Generate Robot SFP PDF")]
protected IEnumerable exportSFPReport(PXAdapter adapter)
{
//Report Paramenters
Dictionary<String, String> parameters = new Dictionary<String, String>();
parameters["SOOrder.OrderType"] = Base.Document.Current.OrderType;
parameters["SOOrder.OrderNbr"] = Base.Document.Current.OrderNbr;
IEnumerable reportFileInfo = ExportReport(adapter, "IN619217", parameters);
exportTrayLabelReport(adapter, "SFP");
return reportFileInfo;
}

Answer 1

The problem here is that your action is synchronous, so it is trying to complete within the Invoke call (which is not a good thing for long processes). You have to explicitly make your operation long-running by using PXLongOperation.StartOperation inside your handler, and then your client code should work properly, as it already handles the waiting and checking.

Answer 2

I believe the reason why you encounter time-out is because there is no TCP communication between the time you sent the request and receive the response. With TCP KeepAlive flag set to true, the client will periodically ping the server to reset the time-out period.
That would be the best way. However Acumatica connections are rather high level so I don't think you'll be able to easily access that flag. What I would try first in a scenario that doesn't involve external application is to wrap your action event-handler code in a PXLongOperation block which has to do something similar to keep connection alive under the hood:
PXLongOperation.StartOperation(this or Base, delegate
{
your code here
});
When I do encounter time-outs in Acumatica that can't be solved with PXLongOperation I go for the simplest method which is increasing IIS timeout in Web.Config file. I'm not sure if your use case with external application will go well with async PXLongOperation. The handler would return prematurely and the client could not be able to retrieve the async payload.
So you might have to increase time-out instead. As far as I know there's no real practical drawback to doing this unless your website is under threat of DOS attacks.
You can locate and edit the Web.Config file of your Acumatica instance using inetmgr program if you are self-hosting Acumatica. Otherwise talk to your SAAS contact to see if that's an option.
I'm pretty sure you are hitting IIS time-out. A tell-tale sign would be lost connection after exactly 5 minutes which is the default 300 seconds value. You can edit Web.Config file to increase executionTimeout value. It's not a bad idea to increase maxRequestLength too if you are requesting large amount of data from Acumatica API as this is also a common cause of failure that you miss in testing and occurs in real-life scenarios:
<httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" requestValidationMode="2.0" maxRequestLength="1048576" />