Handling Timeouts with Python's JIRA Library?

I’m integrating the Python JIRA library into a Flask application and encountering issues when the JIRA server becomes unresponsive. Even after tweaking both the timeout and retry settings as per the documentation, I haven’t been able to trigger an error when the service is down. Has anyone successfully implemented a mechanism that reliably raises exceptions during extended load or retry intervals due to JIRA being unavailable?

I encountered similar challenges when integrating the JIRA library into my Flask project. I ended up wrapping the API calls in a custom function that performed an initial health check. Instead of relying solely on the JIRA library’s built-in timeout settings, I used a direct REST API ping with an extended timeout to ensure the service was reachable. Catching exceptions from these pings allowed me to conditionally make the main API call. This extra step reliably indicated when the JIRA server was down and helped me provide proper error handling.

My experience with handling timeouts in Python’s JIRA library showed that relying solely on built-in retry or timeout settings may not capture all failure scenarios, especially device-level unresponsiveness. I integrated a manual network check using a simple REST call to verify the JIRA service status before attempting an API call. By wrapping the API request in a try/except block and validating the connection response, I could ensure that exceptions were reliably raised. This method provided more consistent behavior in scenarios where the server was under heavy load or entirely unresponsive.