gdemin
timeout for calls blocked by modal windows?
If I cause excel to pop up a question dialog box, excel.link calls hang until I dismiss that excel window.
Would it be possible to add a timeout to these calls? I know I'd have to catch the error, but that's better than a hung connection.
(I'm using excel & rserve for remote access to data in excel workbooks. so there may not be anyone at the screen to click on the dialog box.)
By now I don't know how it can be done. And, secondary, timeout may cause problems in case of long operations with large amounts of data.
As to how, I'm not much help. I assume it might be better exposed via RDCOM?
But for the long processing, I agree that it should not be turned on by default. If someone has a timeout that's too short, they did it to themselves. So that part does not bother me.
Not sure if this is useful, but here are some links about dealing with modal windows & prompts. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff839782.aspx http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/dismiss-dialogue-using-windows-api.html
Thank you for the links. I will read them.
I think the most realistic way to implement timeouts is to make C code inside package compatible with base R function setTimeLimit. So one can write setTimeLimit(elapsed = 10) to set timeout to 10 seconds for further operation with Excel.
Having not played with it, I'd guess that would leave excel in a hung state as well. The current call would return, but with no/bad data, and no way to get back in excel. (short of a system() call to kill the excel process.)