Python requests - Exception Type: ConnectionError - try: except does not work

Question

I am using a webservice to retrieve some data but sometimes the url is not working and my site is not loading. Do you know how I can handle the following exception so there is no problem with the site in case the webservice is not working?

Django Version: 1.3.1 
Exception Type: ConnectionError
Exception Value: 
HTTPConnectionPool(host='test.com', port=8580): Max retries exceeded with url:

I used

try:
   r = requests.get("http://test.com", timeout=0.001)
except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:    # This is the correct syntax
   print e
   sys.exit(1)

but nothing happens

Answer 1

You should not exit your worker instance sys.exit(1) Furthermore you 're catching the wrong Error.

What you could do for for example is:

from requests.exceptions import ConnectionError
try:
   r = requests.get("http://example.com", timeout=0.001)
except ConnectionError as e:    # This is the correct syntax
   print e
   r = "No response"

In this case your program will continue, setting the value of r which usually saves the response to any default value