[GIS] Avoid time out error Nominatim Geopy OpenStreetMap

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How to avoid the GeocoderTimedOut('Service timed out') error in GeoPy using the OSM Nominatim geocoder? I am not interested in using an exception and skip some entries. I already use a time delay of 1.1 seconds in my script using time.sleep(1.1). Total database is 10,000 entries.

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Best Answer

You could make a recursive function. Just typing Python-esque pseudo-code:

from geopy.exc import GeocoderTimedOut

def do_geocode(address, attempt=1, max_attempts=5):
    try:
        return geopy.geocode(address)
    except GeocoderTimedOut:
        if attempt <= max_attempts:
            return do_geocode(address, attempt=attempt+1)
        raise

Documentation for geopy.exc.GeocoderTimedOut.

This will keep retrying the do_geocode function until it manages to return without a Timeout exception being raised. You might want to limit the number of attempts, or also set a waiting period after a failed attempt. You might also want to think about why a timeout is occurring. Geopy allows you to set the length of time to wait before raising a timeout error, for any of the geocoding methods, with the timeout keyword argument. The documentation says that "some services are consistently slow", and recommends that this be increased.

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