How to understand is websocket is alive?

[johnuopini]

As pointed out in another issue i am being disconnected when idle using public endpoints, is there any way to check if connection is there without making a call? Catching broken pipe in the app logic doesn't work in my use case. An approach i will try is to use a decorator in API related methods so i will reconnect if needed but maybe this can be handled by the library.

[arjanz]

You could try to ping the websocket before you send a call and reconnect if an exception is raised:

try:
    substrate.websocket.ping()
except (WebSocketConnectionClosedException, ConnectionRefusedError,
        WebSocketBadStatusException, BrokenPipeError, SubstrateRequestException) as e:
    # reestablish connection
    substrate.connect_websocket()

Let me know if this works, then I can implement this in the library to automatically have this behaviour

[johnuopini]

I see now an auto_reconnect options is available so i assume this will fix it, anyway i also did fix it in my end by using an @apicall decorator that basically handles a broken pipe error and reconnects, i will still use it because it also allows me to change endpoint while I do so. Thanks for your support!

[akanksha-atrey]

Is enabling auto_reconnect sufficient to handle broken connections or is the suggested ping and reconnect method a better route? I am also noticing an issue with loss of connection when idle.