Testing the Connection

[ccoffrin]

One thing that is a little odd to me is that I can setup a connection like so,

conn = dwave_micro_client.Connection(...)

with a bunch of junk data and I only notice that the connection is broken when I try to use it with a call like,

solver = conn.get_solver()

Maybe the Connection init function could make a simple test, just to make sure it can talk to the server.

[randomir]

"Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission". :)
The Connection constructor only initializes the connection object (with url, token, etc). The first actual connect attempt is on Connection.solver_names()/Connection.get_solver()/Future.result().

This actually makes sense, because the only reliable way to test for validity of url/token/proxies is to try to connect to the API.

[ccoffrin]

Ok. Follow up question, given an initialized connection object, what is the proper way to test if the connection parameters are valid?

[randomir]

The pythonic way would be to just go ahead and do an API request, e.g. Connection.solver_names(), assuming it will succeed, and catch any network/token exceptions which would signal a bad url/token.

If each call to SAPI had a very large cost associated with it (e.g. time to success/failure), a "ping"/"verify" endpoint would then be useful. But currently, Connection.solver_names()/Connection.get_solver() can be regarded as such low cost "canary" endpoints.

[ccoffrin]

Ok, I'll close this issue then.