You may use the signal package if you are running on UNIX:

In [1]: import signal

# Register an handler for the timeout
In [2]: def handler(signum, frame):
   ...:     print("Forever is over!")
   ...:     raise Exception("end of time")
   ...: 

# This function *may* run for an indetermined time...
In [3]: def loop_forever():
   ...:     import time
   ...:     while 1:
   ...:         print("sec")
   ...:         time.sleep(1)
   ...:         
   ...:         

# Register the signal function handler
In [4]: signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, handler)
Out[4]: 0

# Define a timeout for your function
In [5]: signal.alarm(10)
Out[5]: 0

In [6]: try:
   ...:     loop_forever()
   ...: except Exception, exc: 
   ...:     print(exc)
   ....: 
sec
sec
sec
sec
sec
sec
sec
sec
Forever is over!
end of time

# Cancel the timer if the function returned before timeout
# (ok, mine won't but yours maybe will :)
In [7]: signal.alarm(0)
Out[7]: 0

10 seconds after the call signal.alarm(10), the handler is called. This raises an exception that you can intercept from the regular Python code.

This module doesn't play well with threads (but then, who does?)

Note that since we raise an exception when timeout happens, it may end up caught and ignored inside the function, for example of one such function:

def loop_forever():
    while 1:
        print('sec')
        try:
            time.sleep(10)
        except:
            continue

I am the author of wrapt_timeout_decorator

Most of the solutions presented here work wunderfully under Linux on the first glance - because we have fork() and signals() - but on windows the things look a bit different. And when it comes to subthreads on Linux, You cant use Signals anymore.

In order to spawn a process under Windows, it needs to be picklable - and many decorated functions or Class methods are not.

So You need to use a better pickler like dill and multiprocess (not pickle and multiprocessing) - thats why You cant use ProcessPoolExecutor (or only with limited functionality).

For the timeout itself - You need to define what timeout means - because on Windows it will take considerable (and not determinable) time to spawn the process. This can be tricky on short timeouts. Lets assume, spawning the process takes about 0.5 seconds (easily !!!). If You give a timeout of 0.2 seconds what should happen ? Should the function time out after 0.5 + 0.2 seconds (so let the method run for 0.2 seconds)? Or should the called process time out after 0.2 seconds (in that case, the decorated function will ALWAYS timeout, because in that time it is not even spawned) ?

Also nested decorators can be nasty and You cant use Signals in a subthread. If You want to create a truly universal, cross-platform decorator, all this needs to be taken into consideration (and tested).

Other issues are passing exceptions back to the caller, as well as logging issues (if used in the decorated function - logging to files in another process is NOT supported)

I tried to cover all edge cases, You might look into the package wrapt_timeout_decorator, or at least test Your own solutions inspired by the unittests used there.

@Alexis Eggermont - unfortunately I dont have enough points to comment - maybe someone else can notify You - I think I solved Your import issue.

Building on and and enhancing the answer by @piro , you can build a contextmanager. This allows for very readable code which will disable the alaram signal after a successful run (sets signal.alarm(0))

from contextlib import contextmanager
import signal
import time

@contextmanager
def timeout(duration):
    def timeout_handler(signum, frame):
        raise TimeoutError(f'block timedout after {duration} seconds')
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, timeout_handler)
    signal.alarm(duration)
    try:
        yield
    finally:
        signal.alarm(0)

def sleeper(duration):
    time.sleep(duration)
    print('finished')

Example usage:

In [19]: with timeout(2):
    ...:     sleeper(1)
    ...:     
finished

In [20]: with timeout(2):
    ...:     sleeper(3)
    ...:         
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exception                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-20-66c78858116f> in <module>()
      1 with timeout(2):
----> 2     sleeper(3)
      3 

<ipython-input-7-a75b966bf7ac> in sleeper(t)
      1 def sleeper(t):
----> 2     time.sleep(t)
      3     print('finished')
      4 

<ipython-input-18-533b9e684466> in timeout_handler(signum, frame)
      2 def timeout(duration):
      3     def timeout_handler(signum, frame):
----> 4         raise Exception(f'block timedout after {duration} seconds')
      5     signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, timeout_handler)
      6     signal.alarm(duration)

Exception: block timedout after 2 seconds

Great, easy to use and reliable PyPi project timeout-decorator (https://pypi.org/project/timeout-decorator/)

installation:

pip install timeout-decorator

Usage:

import time
import timeout_decorator

@timeout_decorator.timeout(5)
def mytest():
    print "Start"
    for i in range(1,10):
        time.sleep(1)
        print "%d seconds have passed" % i

if __name__ == '__main__':
    mytest()

timeout-decorator don't work on windows system as , windows didn't support signal well.

If you use timeout-decorator in windows system you will get the following

AttributeError: module 'signal' has no attribute 'SIGALRM'

Some suggested to use use_signals=False but didn't worked for me.

Author @bitranox created the following package:

pip install https://github.com/bitranox/wrapt-timeout-decorator/archive/master.zip

Code Sample:

import time
from wrapt_timeout_decorator import *

@timeout(5)
def mytest(message):
    print(message)
    for i in range(1,10):
        time.sleep(1)
        print('{} seconds have passed'.format(i))

def main():
    mytest('starting')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Gives the following exception:

TimeoutError: Function mytest timed out after 5 seconds

Highlights

• Raises TimeoutError uses exceptions to alert on timeout - can easily be modified
• Cross Platform: Windows & Mac OS X
• Compatibility: Python 3.6+ (I also tested on python 2.7 and it works with small syntax adjustments)

For full explanation and extension to parallel maps, see here https://flipdazed.github.io/blog/quant%20dev/parallel-functions-with-timeouts

Minimal Example

>>> @killer_call(timeout=4)
... def bar(x):
...        import time
...        time.sleep(x)
...        return x
>>> bar(10)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
__main__.TimeoutError: function 'bar' timed out after 4s

and as expected

>>> bar(2)
2

Full code

import multiprocessing as mp
import multiprocessing.queues as mpq
import functools
import dill

from typing import Tuple, Callable, Dict, Optional, Iterable, List, Any

class TimeoutError(Exception):

    def __init__(self, func: Callable, timeout: int):
        self.t = timeout
        self.fname = func.__name__

    def __str__(self):
            return f"function '{self.fname}' timed out after {self.t}s"


def _lemmiwinks(func: Callable, args: Tuple, kwargs: Dict[str, Any], q: mp.Queue):
    """lemmiwinks crawls into the unknown"""
    q.put(dill.loads(func)(*args, **kwargs))


def killer_call(func: Callable = None, timeout: int = 10) -> Callable:
    """
    Single function call with a timeout

    Args:
        func: the function
        timeout: The timeout in seconds
    """

    if not isinstance(timeout, int):
        raise ValueError(f'timeout needs to be an int. Got: {timeout}')

    if func is None:
        return functools.partial(killer_call, timeout=timeout)

    @functools.wraps(killer_call)
    def _inners(*args, **kwargs) -> Any:
        q_worker = mp.Queue()
        proc = mp.Process(target=_lemmiwinks, args=(dill.dumps(func), args, kwargs, q_worker))
        proc.start()
        try:
            return q_worker.get(timeout=timeout)
        except mpq.Empty:
            raise TimeoutError(func, timeout)
        finally:
            try:
                proc.terminate()
            except:
                pass
    return _inners

if __name__ == '__main__':
    @killer_call(timeout=4)
    def bar(x):
        import time
        time.sleep(x)
        return x

    print(bar(2))
    bar(10)

Notes

You will need to import inside the function because of the way dill works.

This will also mean these functions may not be not compatible with doctest if there are imports inside your target functions. You will get an issue with __import__ not found.

Just in case it is helpful for anyone, building on the answer by @piro, I've made a function decorator:

import time
import signal
from functools import wraps


def timeout(timeout_secs: int):
    def wrapper(func):
        @wraps(func)
        def time_limited(*args, **kwargs):
            # Register an handler for the timeout
            def handler(signum, frame):
                raise Exception(f"Timeout for function '{func.__name__}'")

            # Register the signal function handler
            signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, handler)

            # Define a timeout for your function
            signal.alarm(timeout_secs)

            result = None
            try:
                result = func(*args, **kwargs)
            except Exception as exc:
                raise exc
            finally:
                # disable the signal alarm
                signal.alarm(0)

            return result

        return time_limited

    return wrapper

Using the wrapper on a function with a 20 seconds timeout would look something like:

    @timeout(20)
    def my_slow_or_never_ending_function(name):
        while True:
            time.sleep(1)
            print(f"Yet another second passed {name}...")

    try:
        results = my_slow_or_never_ending_function("Yooo!")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"ERROR: {e}")

Another solution with asyncio :

If you want to cancel the background task and not just timeout on the running main code, then you need an explicit communication from main thread to ask the code of the task to cancel , like a threading.Event()

import asyncio
import functools
import multiprocessing
from concurrent.futures.thread import ThreadPoolExecutor


class SingletonTimeOut:
    pool = None

    @classmethod
    def run(cls, to_run: functools.partial, timeout: float):
        pool = cls.get_pool()
        loop = cls.get_loop()
        try:
            task = loop.run_in_executor(pool, to_run)
            return loop.run_until_complete(asyncio.wait_for(task, timeout=timeout))
        except asyncio.TimeoutError as e:
            error_type = type(e).__name__ #TODO
            raise e

    @classmethod
    def get_pool(cls):
        if cls.pool is None:
            cls.pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(multiprocessing.cpu_count())
        return cls.pool

    @classmethod
    def get_loop(cls):
        try:
            return asyncio.get_event_loop()
        except RuntimeError:
            asyncio.set_event_loop(asyncio.new_event_loop())
            # print("NEW LOOP" + str(threading.current_thread().ident))
            return asyncio.get_event_loop()

# ---------------

TIME_OUT = float('0.2')  # seconds

def toto(input_items,nb_predictions):
    return 1

to_run = functools.partial(toto,
                           input_items=1,
                           nb_predictions="a")

results = SingletonTimeOut.run(to_run, TIME_OUT)

I have face the same problem but my situation is need work on sub thread, signal didn't work for me, so I wrote a python package: timeout-timer to solve this problem, support for use as context or decorator, use signal or sub thread module to trigger a timeout interrupt:

from timeout_timer import timeout, TimeoutInterrupt

class TimeoutInterruptNested(TimeoutInterrupt):
    pass

def test_timeout_nested_loop_both_timeout(timer="thread"):
    cnt = 0
    try:
        with timeout(5, timer=timer):
            try:
                with timeout(2, timer=timer, exception=TimeoutInterruptNested):
                    sleep(2)
            except TimeoutInterruptNested:
                cnt += 1
            time.sleep(10)
    except TimeoutInterrupt:
        cnt += 1
    assert cnt == 2

see more: https://github.com/dozysun/timeout-timer

Here is a POSIX version that combines many of the previous answers to deliver following features:

1. Subprocesses blocking the execution.
2. Usage of the timeout function on class member functions.
3. Strict requirement on time-to-terminate.

Here is the code and some test cases:

import threading
import signal
import os
import time

class TerminateExecution(Exception):
    """
    Exception to indicate that execution has exceeded the preset running time.
    """


def quit_function(pid):
    # Killing all subprocesses
    os.setpgrp()
    os.killpg(0, signal.SIGTERM)

    # Killing the main thread
    os.kill(pid, signal.SIGTERM)


def handle_term(signum, frame):
    raise TerminateExecution()


def invoke_with_timeout(timeout, fn, *args, **kwargs):
    # Setting a sigterm handler and initiating a timer
    old_handler = signal.signal(signal.SIGTERM, handle_term)
    timer = threading.Timer(timeout, quit_function, args=[os.getpid()])
    terminate = False

    # Executing the function
    timer.start()
    try:
        result = fn(*args, **kwargs)
    except TerminateExecution:
        terminate = True
    finally:
        # Restoring original handler and cancel timer
        signal.signal(signal.SIGTERM, old_handler)
        timer.cancel()

    if terminate:
        raise BaseException("xxx")

    return result

### Test cases
def countdown(n):
    print('countdown started', flush=True)
    for i in range(n, -1, -1):
        print(i, end=', ', flush=True)
        time.sleep(1)
    print('countdown finished')
    return 1337


def really_long_function():
    time.sleep(10)


def really_long_function2():
    os.system("sleep 787")


# Checking that we can run a function as expected.
assert invoke_with_timeout(3, countdown, 1) == 1337

# Testing various scenarios
t1 = time.time()
try:
    print(invoke_with_timeout(1, countdown, 3))
    assert(False)
except BaseException:
    assert(time.time() - t1 < 1.1)
    print("All good", time.time() - t1)

t1 = time.time()
try:
    print(invoke_with_timeout(1, really_long_function2))
    assert(False)
except BaseException:
    assert(time.time() - t1 < 1.1)
    print("All good", time.time() - t1)


t1 = time.time()
try:
    print(invoke_with_timeout(1, really_long_function))
    assert(False)
except BaseException:
    assert(time.time() - t1 < 1.1)
    print("All good", time.time() - t1)

# Checking that classes are referenced and not
# copied (as would be the case with multiprocessing)


class X:
    def __init__(self):
        self.value = 0

    def set(self, v):
        self.value = v


x = X()
invoke_with_timeout(2, x.set, 9)
assert x.value == 9

Here is a simple example running one method with timeout and also retriev its value if successfull.

import multiprocessing
import time

ret = {"foo": False}


def worker(queue):
    """worker function"""

    ret = queue.get()

    time.sleep(1)

    ret["foo"] = True
    queue.put(ret)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    queue = multiprocessing.Queue()
    queue.put(ret)

    p = multiprocessing.Process(target=worker, args=(queue,))
    p.start()
    p.join(timeout=10)

    if p.exitcode is None:
        print("The worker timed out.")
    else:
        print(f"The worker completed and returned: {queue.get()}")