diff --git a/modules/swagger-codegen/src/main/resources/php/Swagger.mustache b/modules/swagger-codegen/src/main/resources/php/Swagger.mustache
index f8a602963b6..1aace837b1d 100644
--- a/modules/swagger-codegen/src/main/resources/php/Swagger.mustache
+++ b/modules/swagger-codegen/src/main/resources/php/Swagger.mustache
@@ -37,6 +37,16 @@ class APIClient {
     $this->apiServer = $apiServer;
   }
 
+  /**
+   *  @param integer $seconds Number of seconds before timing out [set to 0 for no timeout]
+  */
+  public function setTimeout($seconds) {
+    if (!is_numeric($seconds)) {
+      throw new Exception('Timeout variable must be numeric.');
+    }
+    $this->curl_timout = $seconds;
+  }
+
 
     /**
    * @param string $resourcePath path to method endpoint
@@ -72,7 +82,9 @@ class APIClient {
     $url = $this->apiServer . $resourcePath;
 
     $curl = curl_init();
-    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
+    if ($this->curl_timout) {
+      curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $this->curl_timout);
+    }
     // return the result on success, rather than just TRUE
     curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
     curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);