Where do you put timeout and retry in a network client?

Short answer

Put the timeout at the external boundary, and make retry limited and conditioned on transient errors, with backoff and without repeating dangerous side effects.

Explanation

Set a time budget for the attempt, log the reason for the interruption, and do not retry a non-idempotent POST without an idempotency key or a clear contract. Do not let every UI decide its own retry policy.

Common mistakes

• An immediate retry with no limit, which increases the load.
• Hiding a timeout as if it were an empty response.

Follow-up questions

• How do you interpret an HTTP response and handle status codes?

Sources

• Dart API — Future.timeout
• RFC 9110 — HTTP Semantics