I have a full stack app that takes input from a user and posts the data to a Google Spreadsheet using their API service.
The service was working perfectly until a few months ago where one of the requests from a client failed to post and gave us the error: 2020-03-09T11:42:49.035293+00:00 app[web.1]: The API returned an error: Error: The service is currently unavailable.
After investigating, this error refers to a 503 and the solution would be to retry, so I decided to use an npm package called 'retry' and added this inside the "listMajors" function (see Spreadsheets API sample in: https://developers.google.com/sheets/api/quickstart/nodejs), like this:
function listMajors(auth) {
const sheets = google.sheets({version: 'v4', auth});
// 3 Attempt wrapper
function listMajorsWrapper(callback) {
operation.attempt(function(currentAttempt) {
sheets.spreadsheets.values.append({
spreadsheetId: config.spreadsheetId,
range: 'Requests',
valueInputOption: 'USER_ENTERED',
insertDataOption: 'INSERT_ROWS',
resource: {
"values":
[
data
]
}
}, (err, res) => {
if (operation.retry(err)) {
return;
}
callback(err ? operation.mainError() : null, res);
//if (err) return console.log('The API returned an error: ' + err);
});
})
}
listMajorsWrapper(function(err, result) {
console.log(err, result);
});
}
The retry options are:
// RETRY configuration
var operation = retry.operation({
retries: 2, // try 1 time and retry 2 times if needed, total = 3
minTimeout: 10 * 1000, // the number of milliseconds before starting the first retry
maxTimeout: 60 * 1000 // the maximum number of milliseconds between two retries
});
Yesterday, I did around 5 tests and two of them gave me a duplicate.
After searching the logs, I found "retry: true".
2020-05-14T13:46:52.070771+00:00 app[web.1]: 'Content-Type': 'application/json',
2020-05-14T13:46:52.070772+00:00 app[web.1]: Accept: 'application/json' },
2020-05-14T13:46:52.070772+00:00 app[web.1]: params:
2020-05-14T13:46:52.070772+00:00 app[web.1]: { valueInputOption: 'USER_ENTERED',
2020-05-14T13:46:52.070773+00:00 app[web.1]: insertDataOption: 'INSERT_ROWS' },
2020-05-14T13:46:52.070773+00:00 app[web.1]: validateStatus: [Function],
2020-05-14T13:46:52.070773+00:00 app[web.1]: retry: true,
Questions:
- Does Google offer a retry option? If so, how many retries do they have?
- Is this a good way to code a retry for Spreadsheets API or should I be doing something different (do you have examples)?
Edit after Alessandro's response: npm retry uses an exponential backoff <-- this is the right retry approach
New --> "Added a timeout"
Will this wait for a Google retry to happen first and avoid the duplicate or just delays the initial check?
I did several tests yesterday and I didn't see a duplicate, but that doesn't mean that it's still correct. I'm not 100% sure.
setTimeout(function() {
if (operation.retry(err)) {
return;
}
callback(err ? operation.mainError() : null, res);
}, 10000)
