Exceptions during cron runs are not caught [#1567042]

During cron runs the Twitter account are refreshed, but if an error occurs during this process an exception is thrown which is not caught. This will prevent other important cron tasks from running.

Some examples of errors I've seen occurring during cron:

Connection timed out
request timed out
Internal Server Error
Service Temporarily Unavailable
Service Unavailable

WD twitter: exception 'TwitterException' with message 'Connection timed out' in sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php:284
Stack trace:
#0 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php(227): Twitter->request('http://api.twit...', Array, 'GET')
#1 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php(112): Twitter->call('statuses/user_t...', Array, 'GET', '0')
#2 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php(160): Twitter->get_statuses('statuses/user_t...', Array, '0')
#3 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.inc(125): Twitter->user_timeline('1410601', Array, '0')
#4 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.module(143): twitter_fetch_user_timeline('1410601')
#5 [internal function]: twitter_cron()

Comment	File	Size	Author
#1	1567042-1-twitter-cron_exception.patch	978 bytes	pfrenssen

Comments

Comment #1

pfrenssen

Sofia

commented 8 May 2012 at 10:10

Status:

Active

» Needs review

Status	File	Size
new	1567042-1-twitter-cron_exception.patch	978 bytes

Comment #2

juampynr commented 10 May 2012 at 01:31

Version:	7.x-3.x-dev	» 6.x-3.x-dev
Status:	Needs review	» Active
Issue tags:		+needs backport to 6.x

Committed. Thanks.

http://drupalcode.org/project/twitter.git/commitdiff/f4a03bb6fb9132fbfc6...

See if you can make and test a patch for branch 6.x-3.x

Comment #3

pfrenssen

Sofia

commented 15 May 2012 at 16:33

Version:

6.x-3.x-dev

» 7.x-3.x-dev

Hmm somehow I encountered this problem again, I have received the following uncaught exception, even with the patch from #1 applied.

WD twitter: exception 'TwitterException' with message 'Service Unavailable' in sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php:284
Stack trace:
#0 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php(227): Twitter->request('http://api.twit...', Array, 'GET')
#1 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php(112): Twitter->call('statuses/user_t...', Array, 'GET', '0')
#2 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.lib.php(160): Twitter->get_statuses('statuses/user_t...', Array, '0')
#3 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.inc(125): Twitter->user_timeline('172430303', Array, '0')
#4 sites/all/modules/contrib/twitter/twitter.module(144): twitter_fetch_user_timeline('172430303')
#5 [internal function]: twitter_cron()

Comment #4

pfrenssen

Sofia

commented 15 May 2012 at 17:48

Ok it seems that I am mistaken about the entire issue. The exceptions were already caught successfully in Twitter::call():

  /**
   * Method for calling any twitter api resource
   */
  public function call($path, $params = array(), $method = 'GET', $use_auth = FALSE) {
    [...]
    try {
      if ($use_auth) {
        $response = $this->auth_request($url, $params, $method);
      }
      else {
        $response = $this->request($url, $params, $method);
      }
    }
    catch (TwitterException $e) {
      watchdog('twitter', '!message', array('!message' => $e->__toString()), WATCHDOG_ERROR);
      return FALSE;
    }
    [...]
  }

I am running cron from the CLI, and this causes a stack trace to be output to STDERR whenever exceptions occur, regardless of whether the exception is caught or not. I was mistaking these stack traces as fatal errors. Reading back the word "uncaught" is not even present in the error message, I have somehow overlooked this all the time.

Actually it transpires that the problem only existed in my head and my patch was not needed at all. It can best be reverted, it does not do any harm but is unneeded as the exceptions are already handled.