Why is TIMEOUT= argument not recognized within SAS PROC HTTP?

Question

I'm trying to account for missing files at a specific URL. For example, running PROC HTTP to get the following Excel file https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-poverty-thresholds/thresh17.xls runs without timing out, eventually returning a 304 code. The SAS documentation clearly lists TIMEOUT= as an optional argument, but when I try to use it I get a syntax error:

ERROR 22-322: Syntax error, expecting one of the following: ;, AUTH_ANY, AUTH_BASIC, AUTH_NEGOTIATE, AUTH_NONE, AUTH_NTLM, CLEAR_CACHE, CLEAR_CONN_CACHE, CLEAR_COOKIES, CT, EXPECT_100_CONTINUE, FOLLOWLOC, HEADERIN, HEADEROUT, HEADEROUT_OVERWRITE, HTTP_TOKENAUTH, IN, METHOD, NOFOLLOW, NOFOLLOWLOC, NO_CONN_CACHE, NO_COOKIES, OUT, PROXYHOST, PROXYPASSWORD, PROXYPORT, PROXYUSERNAME, PROXY_AUTH_BASIC, PROXY_AUTH_NEGOTIATE, PROXY_AUTH_NONE, PROXY_AUTH_NTLM, URL, VERBOSE, WEBAUTHDOMAIN, WEBPASSWORD, WEBUSERNAME. ERROR 202-322: The option or parameter is not recognized and will be ignored.

Here is my code:

filename resp "C:\response";
    proc http
        url="https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-poverty-thresholds/thresh17.xls";
        method="GET"
        out=resp
        TIMEOUT=5;
    run;

Is there a different way to account for timeout issues within SAS?

Richard Richard · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-11T19:39:51

Most likely you are not running SAS version 9.4M5.

The 9.4 What's new documentation states in 9.4M5 (September 2017)

PROC HTTP adds a DEBUG statement, the OAUTH_BEARER= procedure option and TIMEOUT= procedure option, and response status macro variables.

Why is TIMEOUT= argument not recognized within SAS PROC HTTP?

1 Answers