Rate Limiting

Following on from the V1 guide, we’ll learn how to implement rate limiting on V2. Rate limiting acts as a crucial traffic control mechanism that helps maintain system stability and security by controlling how many requests each client can make within specific time intervals. This ensures fair resource distribution and protects against potential abuse or unintended heavy usage.

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Understanding Rate Limiting

When we build an e-commerce API, we’re essentially creating a digital storefront that needs to handle various types of traffic. Without proper controls, we might face scenarios like:

• Bots aggressively scraping our product catalog
• Brute force attempts on our authentication endpoints
• Legitimate users experiencing slowdowns due to excessive requests from others

Rate limiting solves these challenges by implementing a simple rule :

`X` number of requests per `Y` time window

For example, we might allow 100 requests per minute per IP address.