Communicating rate limiting status in API responses - any standard or best practices?

[Cooper Marcus]

As I prepare to implement rate limiting on some APIs, I've been considering how to communicate, to API clients, the "status" of their rate limit. The purpose of this communication it to allow API clients to adjust their behavior - for example, if the client is told "you are only 10 calls away from your rate limit, and your limit will reset in 30 minutes", the client might adjust its call frequency to once per 3 mins. 

Github commuicates rate limit status via HTTP headers as noted here https://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting

Is that the best approach? Are there other approaches you like? Are there any standards or best practices?

Thanks, Cooper

[jeff fitzgerald]

Twitter, Instagram, Hipchat, 4Square and others are all using the same pattern as Github. Given how many APIs have adopted this convention, that should be enough to make it a best practice, if not a standard.

Good API patterns and conventions will almost always bubble to the top. This is one of them.

[mca]

might be worth proposing this as a new header to IETF.

mca

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[jeff fitzgerald]

+1 mike.