Implementing Timeouts in Go Using Channels

Introduction

The purpose of this challenge is to implement timeouts in Go using channels and select.

Skills Graph

%%%%{init: {'theme':'neutral'}}%%%% flowchart RL go(("`Go`")) -.-> go/ConcurrencyGroup(["`Concurrency`"]) go/ConcurrencyGroup -.-> go/timeouts("`Timeouts`") subgraph Lab Skills go/timeouts -.-> lab-15443{{"`Implementing Timeouts in Go Using Channels`"}} end

Timeouts

When programs connect to external resources or need to bound execution time, timeouts are important. The challenge is to implement timeouts in Go using channels and select.

Requirements

Implement timeouts in Go using channels and select.
Use a buffered channel to prevent goroutine leaks in case the channel is never read.
Use time.After to await a value to be sent after the timeout.
Use select to proceed with the first receive that's ready.

Example

## Running this program shows the first operation timing
## out and the second succeeding.
$ go run timeouts.go
timeout 1
result 2

Summary

In this challenge, we learned how to implement timeouts in Go using channels and select. We used a buffered channel to prevent goroutine leaks in case the channel is never read, and time.After to await a value to be sent after the timeout. We also used select to proceed with the first receive that's ready.