Timeout error when using SoftLayer Ruby API - ruby

Question

I am trying to get simple billing information using the script below. The script fails with a timeout error. Can someone help me figure out the problem?
require 'rubygems'
require 'softlayer_api'
require 'pp'
billing = SoftLayer::Service.new("SoftLayer_Account",:username => "USER", :api_key => "KEY", :timeout => 99999)
object_mask = "mask[orderItem[order[userRecord[username]]], invoiceItem[totalRecurringAmount]]"
user_bill= billing.object_mask(object_mask).getNextInvoiceTopLevelBillingItems
pp user_bill

Answer 1

If the API is responding normally for other calls this is most likely caused by the amount of data being requested. The SLAPI will often time out when more information than it can handle is requested.
You can avoid this by using result limits or specifying only the specific properties you want.
When you reference a relational property by default the entire set of local properties is returned. Even when passing through one property to another. The above call would return the entire set of billing items with their associated local properties, all of the local properties for the order(which is being pulled in for each order item redundantly), and the entire invoice item with totalRecurringAmount.
By specifying id at each level you can reduce the amount of data returned:
mask[
orderItem[
id,
order[
id,
userRecord[username]
]
],
invoiceItem[
id,
totalRecurringAmount
]
]
However, at some number of devices/products the call will start to become overloaded again and it will be necessary to paginate the results and process them in batch.
http://sldn.softlayer.com/blog/phil/How-Solve-Error-fetching-http-headers

Answer 2

Probably your account has many billing items and it causes the exception, take a look the following article:
http://sldn.softlayer.com/blog/phil/How-Solve-Error-fetching-http-headers
I can recommend to use resultLimits, in order to avoid the exception, take a look the following Ruby script:
# Get Next Invoice Top Level Billing Items
#
# This script retrieves the billing items that will be on an account's next invoice
#
# Important manual pages:
# http://sldn.softlayer.com/reference/services/SoftLayer_Account/getNextInvoiceTopLevelBillingItems
# http://sldn.softlayer.com/reference/datatypes/SoftLayer_Billing_Item
#
# #license <http://sldn.softlayer.com/article/License>
# #author SoftLayer Technologies, Inc. <sldn#softlayer.com>
require 'rubygems'
require 'softlayer_api'
require 'pp'
# Helper function to fetch through all results from SoftLayer api
# using small page sizes and sleeping before every new page fetch.
def fetch_all(service, method)
records = []; offset = 0; limit = 1000
loop do
results = service.result_limit(offset, limit).send(method)
records += results
break if results.size < limit
offset += limit
sleep 3
end
records
end
# Creating the account service.
billing = SoftLayer::Service.new("SoftLayer_Account", :username => "set me", :api_key => "set me", :timeout => 200)
# object mask
object_mask = "mask[orderItem[order[userRecord[username]]], invoiceItem[totalRecurringAmount]]"
begin
# Calling helper function to get all the result for getNextInvoiceTopLevelBillingItems method
user_bill = fetch_all(billing.object_mask(object_mask), :getNextInvoiceTopLevelBillingItems)
# Print
pp user_bill
rescue StandardError => exception
puts "Error: #{exception}"
end
I hope it helps