F# Async.RunSynchronously with timeout and cancellationToken

Question

When calling Async.RunSynchronously with a timeout and a CancellationToken, the timeout value seems to be ignored. I can work around this by calling CancelAfter on the CancellationToken, but ideally I'd like to be able to distinguish between exceptions that occur in the workflow, TimeOutExceptions and OperationCanceledExceptions.

I believe the sample code below demonstrates this.

open System
open System.Threading

let work = 
    async {
        let endTime = DateTime.UtcNow.AddMilliseconds(100.0)
        while DateTime.UtcNow < endTime do
            do! Async.Sleep(10)
            Console.WriteLine "working..."
        raise ( Exception "worked for more than 100 millis" )
    }


[<EntryPoint>]
let main argv = 
    try
        Async.RunSynchronously(work, 50)
    with
        | e -> Console.WriteLine (e.GetType().Name + ": " + e.Message)

    let cts = new CancellationTokenSource()

    try
        Async.RunSynchronously(work, 50, cts.Token)
    with
        | e -> Console.WriteLine (e.GetType().Name + ": " + e.Message)  


    cts.CancelAfter(80)
    try
        Async.RunSynchronously(work, 50, cts.Token)
    with
        | e -> Console.WriteLine (e.GetType().Name + ": " + e.Message)  

    Console.ReadKey(true) |> ignore

    0

The outputs the following, showing that the timeout is only effective in the first case (where no CancelationToken is specified)

working...
working...
TimeoutException: The operation has timed out.
working...
working...
working...
working...
working...
working...
working...
Exception: worked for more than 100 millis
working...
working...
working...
working...
working...
working...
OperationCanceledException: The operation was canceled.

Is this the intended behaviour? Is there any way get the behaviour I'm after?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this is intended behaviour - at least, I do not see any reason why it would be. However, this behaviour is implemented directly in the handling of parameters of RunSynchronously. If you look at the library source code, you can see:

static member RunSynchronously (p:Async<'T>,?timeout,?cancellationToken) =
  let timeout,token =
    match cancellationToken with
    | None -> timeout,(!defaultCancellationTokenSource).Token                
    | Some token when not token.CanBeCanceled -> timeout, token                
    | Some token -> None, token

In your case (with both timeout and a cancellation token that can be cancelled), the code goes through the last branch and ignores the timeout. I think this is either a bug or it is something that should be mentioned in the documentation.

As a workaround, you can create a separate CancellationTokenSource to specify the timeout and link it to the main cancellation source so that the caller provides (using CreateLinkedTokenSource). When you get OperationCancelledException, you can then detect whether the source was an actual cancellation or a timeout:

type Microsoft.FSharp.Control.Async with
  static member RunSynchronouslyEx(a:Async<'T>, timeout:int, cancellationToken) =
    // Create cancellation token that is cancelled after 'timeout'
    let timeoutCts = new CancellationTokenSource()
    timeoutCts.CancelAfter(timeout)

    // Create a combined token that is cancelled either when 
    // 'cancellationToken' is cancelled, or after a timeout
    let combinedCts = 
      CancellationTokenSource.CreateLinkedTokenSource
        (cancellationToken, timeoutCts.Token)

    // Run synchronously with the combined token
    try Async.RunSynchronously(a, cancellationToken = combinedCts.Token)
    with :? OperationCanceledException as e ->
      // If the timeout occurred, then we throw timeout exception instead
      if timeoutCts.IsCancellationRequested then
        raise (new System.TimeoutException())
      else reraise()