[ANNOUNCE] Rate Limit Headers on all API Calls

[Abe Stanway]

Hi everyone -

We recently added rate limit headers for all API calls. They look like this:

X-RateLimit-Limit: 10000
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 9924
X-RateLimit-Reset: 22373

X-RateLimit-Limit defines the maximum calls per 24 hour period you get. For most of you, this will be 10000.

X-RateLimit-Remaining tells you how many more calls you have before you get rate limited.

X-RateLimit-Reset tells you how long, in seconds, before your period resets and you get re-upped to another 10000 calls.

This should make debugging suspected rate limit issues very easy. Reach out if you have any questions!

Docs:

http://www.etsy.com/developers/documentation/getting_started/api_basics#section_rate_limiting

-Abe

[Graeme Grant]

Hi Abe,
 
I've been watching these new rate limit stats and they appear to go up and down like swells in the ocean. I have a question: Is the rate limit a hard reset every 24 hours or rplling hourly?
 
G
 

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Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:24:48 -0700
From: a...@etsy.com
To: etsy-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Rate Limit Headers on all API Calls

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[Abe Stanway]

They should be hard resetting every 24 hours. Are you seeing different behavior?

[R. S.]

Hi Abe --

I'm seeing a different problem. We're now getting API Limit warnings emailed to us for a specific user, but we are not getting enough information to determine which user is the cause of the problem. We've never gotten the API limit warnings before and our app behavior hasn't changed much. Are these just now getting enforced?

The problem is that Etsy only allows a single API call to do an inventory quantity adjustment, and we have customers with a few thousand items that do a daily update of quantities, and this means one API call per update (sometimes more). This is causing our biggest customers to probably blow through the API limits, but we don't have enough information to tell for sure. The email cites a user ID, but not sure how to match that up with the right user on our end.

First, can you tell me how to get that information, and second, can we figure out how in our case to either get our rate limit (for specific users) increased or a better way to optimize the API calls when we're doing batch updates on thousands of items for a single user?

[Graeme Grant]

Hi Abe,
 
If you look at these 3 X-Etsy-Request-Uuid ( -qk4Skx3W5-0aRQ0M3AtuYDi7EP8 / VEI8X7xxFfzaeo6iAqOh31om_tu7 / B1cmUWco-wI6aPrHo1sVNKEYIYnq ) you will see that the date/times are in sequence but the X-RateLimit-Remaining counter is not a sequential decrement. 
 
Is this a bug?
 
G.
 

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Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:46:54 -0700
From: a...@etsy.com
To: etsy-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Rate Limit Headers on all API Calls

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[Chris Dary]

Hey Graeme,

Unfortunately we can't see the headers given the request UUID on a successful request, only higher level information. I'm looking into this, but if you want to provide us with HTTP level traffic info off-list that'd be helpful, too.

Thanks for the report,

-Chris

--
 
 

[Graeme Grant]

Chris,
 
Ok... sent you an email direct off-group. Time of day appears to be irrelevant.
 
Hope this helps.
 
G.
 

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From: cd...@etsy.com
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 09:43:05 -0400

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Rate Limit Headers on all API Calls

To: etsy-...@googlegroups.com

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[Abe Stanway]

I can confirm that our API rate limit behavior follows a progressive 24 hour structure: that is, a day is split into 12, two-hour segments, and rate limits are calculated by summing the total requests made in last contiguous 12 segments together. So, you should see a small rise in your remaning rate limit every two hours, as opposed to a large rise every 24 hours.

The documentation has been updated:

http://www.etsy.com/developers/documentation/getting_started/api_basics#section_rate_limiting

Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions.

[Graeme Grant]

Thanks ... That confirms what I was seeing...
 

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Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 11:44:38 -0700

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