NAME

RateLimitations - manage per-service rate limitations

SYNOPSIS

use 5.010;

use RateLimitations qw(
    rate_limited_services
    rate_limits_for_service
    within_rate_limits
    all_service_consumers
);

# Example using the built-in default "rl_internal_testing" service:
#   rl_internal_testing:
#       10s: 2
#       5m:  6

my @rl_services = rate_limited_services();
# ("rl_internal_testing")

my @test_limits = rate_limits_for_service('rl_internal_testing');
# ([10 => 2], [300 => 6])

foreach my $i (1 .. 6) {
    my $guy = ($i % 2) ? 'OddGuy' : 'EvenGuy';
    my $result = (
        within_rate_limits({
                service  => 'rl_internal_testing',
                consumer => $guy,
            })) ? 'permitted' : 'denied';
    say $result . ' for ' . $guy;
}
# permitted for OddGuy
# permitted for EvenGuy
# permitted for OddGuy
# permitted for EvenGuy
# denied for OddGuy
# denied for EvenGuy

my $consumers = all_service_consumers();
# { rl_internal_testing => ['EvenGuy', 'OddGuy']}

DESCRIPTION

RateLimitations is a module to help enforce per-service rate limits.

The rate limits are checked via a backing Redis store. This persistence allows for multiple processes to maintain a shared view of resource usage. Acceptable rates are defined in the /etc/perl_rate_limitations.yml file.

Several utility functions are provided to help examine the inner state to help confirm proper operation.

Nothing is exported from this package by default.

FUNCTIONS

• within_rate_limits({service => $service, consumer => $consumer_id})

  Returns 1 if $consumer_id is permitted further access to $service under the rate limiting rules for the service; 0 is returned if this access would exceed those limits.

  Will croak unless both elements are supplied and $service is valid.

  Note that this call will update the known request rate, even if it is eventually determined that the request is not within limits. This is a conservative approach since we cannot know for certain how the results of this call are used. As such, it is best to use this call only when legitimately gating service access and to allow a bit of extra slack in the permitted limits.

• verify_rate_limitations_config()

  Attempts to load the /etc/perl_rate_limitations.yml file and confirm that its contents make sense. Parsing the file in much the same way as importing the module, additional sanity checks are performed on the supplied rates.

  Returns 1 if the file appears to be OK; 0 otherwise.

• rate_limited_services()

  Returns an array of all known services which have applied rate limits.

• rate_limits_for_service($service)

  Returns an array of rate limits applied to requests for a known $service. Each member of the array is an array reference with two elements:

  [number_of_seconds, number_of_accesses_permitted_in_those_seconds]
  

• all_service_consumers()

  Returns a hash reference with all services and their consumers. May be useful for verifying consumer names are well-formed.

  { service1 => [consumer1, consumer2],
    service2 => [consumer1, consumer2],
  }
  

• flush_all_service_consumers()

  Clears the full list of consumers. Returns the number of items cleared.

CONFIG FILE FORMAT

The services to be limited are defined in the /etc/perl_rate_limitations.yml file. This file should be laid out as follows:

service_name:
    time: count
    time: count
service_name:
    time: count
    time: count

service_name is an arbitrary string to uniquely identify the service

time is a string which can be interpreted by Time::Duration::Concise. This may include using an integer number of seconds.

count is an integer which sets the maximum permitted service_name accesses per time

AUTHOR

Binary.com perl@binary.com

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2015-

LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO