Increase timeout in nodejs built in fetch API

Question

I am using the Fetch API introduced in NodeJS 18 to access an API. However, the request always times out after 10 seconds with the following error message.

TypeError: fetch failed
    at Object.fetch (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:11576:11)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5) {
  cause: ConnectTimeoutError: Connect Timeout Error
      at onConnectTimeout (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:8522:28)
      at node:internal/deps/undici/undici:8480:50
      at Immediate._onImmediate (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:8509:37)
      at processImmediate (node:internal/timers:478:21) {
    code: 'UND_ERR_CONNECT_TIMEOUT'
  }
}

I want to INCREASE the time before the fetch request times out, however I have not been able to find way to do this with the built-in NodeJS API.

Answer 1

Adding to Istiaq's answer, you don't need to set the timeout on the global level. A dispatcher can be applied as an option to the fetch call.

import { Agent } from "undici";

await fetch("https://example.com", {
  dispatcher: new Agent({ connectTimeout: 300 })
});

https://undici.nodejs.org/#/?id=undicifetchinput-init-promise

Answer 2

I faced the same problem using Node 18 and fetch api, and I was able to increase the connect timeout as shown in https://github.com/nodejs/undici/issues/1531#issuecomment-1178869993 I had to add undici using npm:

npm install undici

Then I was able to import setGlobalDispatcher, fetch and Agent from undici:

import { fetch, setGlobalDispatcher, Agent} from 'undici';

And then I used the setGlobalDispatcher globally at the top of the module before any function as follows:

setGlobalDispatcher(new Agent({connect: { timeout: 20_000 }}));

After this it all worked and the 10s connect timeout was correctly increased to 20s.

Please note that in my case i also used an updated "fetchWithTimeout" method instead of just plain fetch to cater for request timeouts. If you also need to handle request timeout, you can find a few implementations here at Fetch API request timeout?