ratelimit Python Package

You can install the ratelimit package directly using pip, or include it in your requirements.txt file for dependency management.

$ pip install ratelimit

To install the latest version directly from the source code, clone the repository and run the setup script.

$ git clone https://github.com/tomasbasham/ratelimit
$ cd ratelimit
$ python setup.py install

When using @limits, you can catch the ratelimit.RateLimitException to implement custom retry logic, such as exponential backoff using the backoff library.

from ratelimit import limits, RateLimitException
from backoff import on_exception, expo
import requests

FIFTEEN_MINUTES = 900

@on_exception(expo, RateLimitException, max_tries=8)
@limits(calls=15, period=FIFTEEN_MINUTES)
def call_api(url):
    response = requests.get(url)
    if response.status_code != 200:
        raise Exception('API response: {}'.format(response.status_code))
    return response

If you prefer to halt the current thread until the rate limit period has elapsed rather than handling an exception, use the @sleep_and_retry decorator in conjunction with @limits. This ensures every function invocation eventually succeeds, but it blocks the thread.

from ratelimit import limits, sleep_and_retry
import requests

FIFTEEN_MINUTES = 900

@sleep_and_retry
@limits(calls=15, period=FIFTEEN_MINUTES)
def call_api(url):
    response = requests.get(url)
    if response.status_code != 200:
        raise Exception('API response: {}'.format(response.status_code))
    return response

The @limits decorator prevents a function from being called more often than allowed by an API provider. It accepts two arguments:

• calls: The number of allowed invocations.
• period: The time window in seconds. If not specified, it defaults to 900 seconds (15 minutes).

If the limit is exceeded, the decorator raises a ratelimit.RateLimitException.

from ratelimit import limits
import requests

FIFTEEN_MINUTES = 900

@limits(calls=15, period=FIFTEEN_MINUTES)
def call_api(url):
    response = requests.get(url)
    if response.status_code != 200:
        raise Exception('API response: {}'.format(response.status_code))
    return response