Avoid infinite retries

Discards all events older than 10 seconds.

Explore further

For detailed documentation that includes this code sample, see the following:

Code sample

C#

To authenticate to Cloud Run functions, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 

using CloudNative.CloudEvents;
using Google.Cloud.Functions.Framework;
using Google.Events.Protobuf.Cloud.PubSub.V1;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace TimeBoundedRetries;

public class Function : ICloudEventFunction<MessagePublishedData>
{
    private static readonly TimeSpan MaxEventAge = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10);
    private readonly ILogger _logger;

    // Note: for additional testability, use an injectable clock abstraction.
    public Function(ILogger<Function> logger) =>
        _logger = logger;

    public Task HandleAsync(CloudEvent cloudEvent, MessagePublishedData data, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        string textData = data.Message.TextData;

        DateTimeOffset utcNow = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow;

        // Every PubSub CloudEvent will contain a timestamp.
        DateTimeOffset timestamp = cloudEvent.Time.Value;
        DateTimeOffset expiry = timestamp + MaxEventAge;

        // Ignore events that are too old.
        if (utcNow > expiry)
        {
            _logger.LogInformation("Dropping PubSub message '{text}'", textData);
            return Task.CompletedTask;
        }

        // Process events that are recent enough.
        // If this processing throws an exception, the message will be retried until either
        // processing succeeds or the event becomes too old and is dropped by the code above.
        _logger.LogInformation("Processing PubSub message '{text}'", textData);
        return Task.CompletedTask;
    }
}

Go

To authenticate to Cloud Run functions, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 


// Package tips contains tips for writing Cloud Functions in Go.
package tips

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"time"

	"cloud.google.com/go/functions/metadata"
)

// PubSubMessage is the payload of a Pub/Sub event.
// See the documentation for more details:
// https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/docs/reference/rest/v1/PubsubMessage
type PubSubMessage struct {
	Data []byte `json:"data"`
}

// FiniteRetryPubSub demonstrates how to avoid inifinite retries.
func FiniteRetryPubSub(ctx context.Context, m PubSubMessage) error {
	meta, err := metadata.FromContext(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		// Assume an error on the function invoker and try again.
		return fmt.Errorf("metadata.FromContext: %w", err)
	}

	// Ignore events that are too old.
	expiration := meta.Timestamp.Add(10 * time.Second)
	if time.Now().After(expiration) {
		log.Printf("event timeout: halting retries for expired event '%q'", meta.EventID)
		return nil
	}

	// Add your message processing logic.
	return processTheMessage(m)
}

Java

To authenticate to Cloud Run functions, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 


import com.google.cloud.functions.BackgroundFunction;
import com.google.cloud.functions.Context;
import com.google.gson.Gson;
import functions.eventpojos.PubsubMessage;
import java.time.Duration;
import java.time.ZoneOffset;
import java.time.ZonedDateTime;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class RetryTimeout implements BackgroundFunction<PubsubMessage> {
  private static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(RetryTimeout.class.getName());
  private static final long MAX_EVENT_AGE = 10_000;

  // Use Gson (https://github.com/google/gson) to parse JSON content.
  private static final Gson gson = new Gson();

  /**
   * Background Cloud Function that only executes within
   * a certain time period after the triggering event
   */
  @Override
  public void accept(PubsubMessage message, Context context) {
    ZonedDateTime utcNow = ZonedDateTime.now(ZoneOffset.UTC);
    ZonedDateTime timestamp = ZonedDateTime.parse(context.timestamp());

    long eventAge = Duration.between(timestamp, utcNow).toMillis();

    // Ignore events that are too old
    if (eventAge > MAX_EVENT_AGE) {
      logger.info(String.format("Dropping event with timestamp %s.", timestamp));
      return;
    }

    // Process events that are recent enough
    // To retry this invocation, throw an exception here
    logger.info(String.format("Processing event with timestamp %s.", timestamp));
  }
}

Node.js

To authenticate to Cloud Run functions, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 

/**
 * Background Cloud Function that only executes within
 * a certain time period after the triggering event
 *
 * @param {object} event The Cloud Functions event.
 * @param {function} callback The callback function.
 */
exports.avoidInfiniteRetries = (event, callback) => {
  const eventAge = Date.now() - Date.parse(event.timestamp);
  const eventMaxAge = 10000;

  // Ignore events that are too old
  if (eventAge > eventMaxAge) {
    console.log(`Dropping event ${event} with age ${eventAge} ms.`);
    callback();
    return;
  }

  // Do what the function is supposed to do
  console.log(`Processing event ${event} with age ${eventAge} ms.`);

  // Retry failed function executions
  const failed = false;
  if (failed) {
    callback('some error');
  } else {
    callback();
  }
};

PHP

To authenticate to Cloud Run functions, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 


/**
 * This function shows an example method for avoiding infinite retries in
 * Google Cloud Functions. By default, functions configured to automatically
 * retry execution on failure will be retried indefinitely - causing an
 * infinite loop. To avoid this, we stop retrying executions (by not throwing
 * exceptions) for any events that are older than a predefined threshold.
 */

use Google\CloudFunctions\CloudEvent;

function avoidInfiniteRetries(CloudEvent $event): void
{
    $log = fopen(getenv('LOGGER_OUTPUT') ?: 'php://stderr', 'wb');

    $eventId = $event->getId();

    // The maximum age of events to process.
    $maxAge = 10; // 10 seconds

    // The age of the event being processed.
    $eventAge = time() - strtotime($event->getTime());

    // Ignore events that are too old
    if ($eventAge > $maxAge) {
        fwrite($log, 'Dropping event ' . $eventId . ' with age ' . $eventAge . ' seconds' . PHP_EOL);
        return;
    }

    // Do what the function is supposed to do
    fwrite($log, 'Processing event: ' . $eventId . ' with age ' . $eventAge . ' seconds' . PHP_EOL);

    // infinite_retries failed function executions
    $failed = true;
    if ($failed) {
        throw new Exception('Event ' . $eventId . ' failed; retrying...');
    }
}

Python

To authenticate to Cloud Run functions, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 

from datetime import datetime, timezone

# The 'python-dateutil' package must be included in requirements.txt.
from dateutil import parser


def avoid_infinite_retries(data, context):
    """Background Cloud Function that only executes within a certain
    time period after the triggering event.

    Args:
        data (dict): The event payload.
        context (google.cloud.functions.Context): The event metadata.
    Returns:
        None; output is written to Stackdriver Logging
    """

    timestamp = context.timestamp

    event_time = parser.parse(timestamp)
    event_age = (datetime.now(timezone.utc) - event_time).total_seconds()
    event_age_ms = event_age * 1000

    # Ignore events that are too old
    max_age_ms = 10000
    if event_age_ms > max_age_ms:
        print(f"Dropped {context.event_id} (age {event_age_ms}ms)")
        return "Timeout"

    # Do what the function is supposed to do
    print(f"Processed {context.event_id} (age {event_age_ms}ms)")
    return  # To retry the execution, raise an exception here

Ruby

To authenticate to Cloud Run functions, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 

require "functions_framework"

FunctionsFramework.cloud_event "avoid_infinite_retries" do |event|
  # Use the event timestamp to determine the event age.
  event_age_secs = Time.now - event.time.to_time
  event_age_ms = (event_age_secs * 1000).to_i

  max_age_ms = 10_000
  if event_age_ms > max_age_ms
    # Ignore events that are too old.
    logger.info "Dropped #{event.id} (age #{event_age_ms}ms)"

  else
    # Do what the function is supposed to do.
    logger.info "Handling #{event.id} (age #{event_age_ms}ms)..."
    failed = true

    # Raise an exception to signal failure and trigger a retry.
    raise "I failed!" if failed
  end
end

What's next

To search and filter code samples for other Google Cloud products, see the Google Cloud sample browser.