Context timeout not working as expected in golang

Question

Helo All,

New to golang and was debugging timeout issues in a production environment. Before making a call to the server we add a timeout of 50ms to context and fire a server call. If the response is not received within 50 ms we expect the application to move on and not wait for the response.

But while debugging, I capture the duration between we fire a server call and the response received (or error out), to my surprise the value at the time is much higher than 50 ms.

Client syntax -

    ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(ctx, e.opts.Timeout)
    defer cancel()
    fireServerCall(ctx)
..
..

def fireServerCall(ctx context:Context){
  startTime:=time.Now()
  //call to the server
  res, err:=callToServer(ctx)
  if err!=nil{
   //capture failure latency
   return ....
  }
   //capture success latency
   return ....
}

Has anyone ever faced any similar issue? Is this expected behaviour? How did you handle such cases?

Am I doing something incorrectly? Suggestions are welcome:)

Edit:

I am passing context in my original code but forgot to mention it here, just added it. That mean, I am passing the same context on which my client is waiting for server to respond within 50 ms.

Answer 1

1. You should pass created context to fireServerCall and callToServer functions
2. callToServer should consider passed context and monitor ctx.Done() channel to stop its execution accordingly