Question: Is it possible to tell if a jquery ajax request has been going on for more than a certain length of time? I would like to prompt users of my site if the request has been going on for 10 seconds to reload and retry, but I cant find anything in the documentation to meet my request.

Answer: 
Try setting timeout property and get the error handler parameter. The possible values are

`"timeout", "error", "abort", and "parsererror"`

```
$.ajax({
    url: "/ajax_json_echo/",
    type: "GET",
    dataType: "json",
    timeout: 1000,
    success: function(response) { alert(response); },
    error: function(x, t, m) {
        if(t==="timeout") {
            alert("got timeout");
        } else {
            alert(t);
        }
    }
});​

```
Set a timeout and then cancel it once it ajax call completes.

```
var timer = setTimeout(function() {
    alert('Too long!');
}, 10000);

$.getJSON(url, function() {
   clearTimeout(timer);
});

```