Retry or fallback

After your application detects a timeout or an error, it must next make a decision whether to retry the transaction immediately or wait before retrying.

Set a timeout value

Set your timeout setting correctly. First, run a single-line item request and note the response time. Then, add 2 to 3 seconds to this time to find the recommended client-side timeout setting. Adjust the timeout value for transactions with multiple line items.

Retry a transaction

Retry your transaction a few times if timeouts are still being returned:

Retry the transaction
Wait 1 second and retry the transaction
Wait several seconds and retry the transaction

It’s important that you don’t retry so often that your attempts are mistaken as a denial-of-service attack. Limit your retries to 5 to 10 attempts to prevent a backlog of concurrent requests and allow the system time to recover.

Things to consider when retrying a transaction:

What if AFC Geo is unresponsive?

If you’re using embedded geolocation (geo = true in a location object) as part of your CalcTaxes request and AFC Geo isn’t responding, the entire transaction fails. To resolve, turn embedded geolocation off (geo = false) and retry the transaction. The AFC Tax Engine determines the taxing jurisdiction based on the address information provided.

For more information, see Geocode O ffline.

Note

Don’t use the embedded geolocation functionality regularly because it impacts performance and can cause the tax calculation request to fail if AFC Geo is experiencing issues.