Using Python decorators to retry request

I have multiple functions in my script which does a REST API api requests.As i need to handle the error scenarios i have put a retry mechanism as below.

no_of_retries = 3
def check_status():
    for i in range(0,no_of_retries):
        url = "http://something/something"
        try:
            result = requests.get(url, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(COMMON_USERNAME, COMMON_PASSWORD)).json()
            if 'error' not in result:
                return result
            else:
                continue
        except Exception as e:
            continue
    return None

I have several different methods which does similar operation. How can we do it better way to avoid duplication may be using decorators.

Answer

Instead of using decorators, the probably better solution is to move the request to its own function, arriving at a structure similar to this:

no_of_retries = 3

def make_request(url):
    for i in range(0,no_of_retries):
        try:
            result = requests.get(url, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(COMMON_USERNAME, COMMON_PASSWORD)).json()
            if 'error' not in result:
                return result
            else:
                continue
        except Exception as e:
            continue
    return result

def check_status():
    result = make_request("http://something/status")

def load_file():
    result = make_request("http://something/file")

This way, you avoid duplicate code while encapsulating the request. If you were to use a decorator, you would need to wrap the whole load_file() method which would prevent you from further processing the request’s result within this function.