Falcon-Limiter

This library provides advanced rate limiting support for the Falcon web framework.

Rate limiting is provided with the help of the popular Limits library.

This library aims to be compatible with CPython 3.6+ and PyPy 3.5+.

Documentation

You can find the documentation of this library on Read the Docs.

Quickstart

Quick example - using fixed-window strategy and storing the hits against limits in the memory:

import falcon
from falcon_limiter import Limiter
from falcon_limiter.utils import get_remote_addr

limiter = Limiter(
    key_func=get_remote_addr,
    default_limits="5 per minute,2 per second"
)

# use the default limit for all methods of this class
@limiter.limit()
class ThingsResource:
    def on_get(self, req, resp):
        resp.body = 'Hello world!'

# add the limiter middleware to the Falcon app
app = falcon.API(middleware=limiter.middleware)

things = ThingsResource()
app.add_route('/things', things)

When making calls against this app, above >5 calls per minute or >2 per seconds you will receive an HTTP 429 error response with message: "Reached allowed limit 5 hits per 1 minute!"

A second, more complicated example - using the moving-window strategy with a shared Redis backend and running the application behind a reverse proxy behind a reverse proxy:

import falcon
from falcon_limiter import Limiter

# a custom key function
def get_access_route_addr(req, resp, resource, params) -> str:
    """ Get the requestor's IP by discounting 1 reverse proxy
    """
    return req.access_route[-2]

limiter = Limiter(
    key_func=get_access_route_addr,
    default_limits="5 per minute,2 per second",
    # only count HTTP 200 responses against the limit:
    default_deduct_when=lambda req, resp, resource, req_succeeded: resp.status == falcon.HTTP_200,
    config={
        'RATELIMIT_KEY_PREFIX': 'myapp',  # to allow multiple apps in the same Redis db
        'RATELIMIT_STORAGE_URL': f'redis://:{REDIS_PSW}@{REDIS_HOST}:{REDIS_PORT}',
        'RATELIMIT_STRATEGY': 'moving-window'
    }
)

class ThingsResource:
    # no rate limit on this method
    def on_get(self, req, resp):
        resp.body = 'Hello world!'

    # a more strict rate limit applied to this method
    # with a custom key function serving up the user_id
    # from the request context as key
    @limiter.limit(limits="3 per minute,1 per second",
        key_func=lambda req, resp, resource, params: req.context.user_id)
    def on_post(self, req, resp):
        resp.body = 'Hello world!'

class SpecialResource:
    # dynamic_limits allowing the 'admin' user a higher limit than others
    @limiter.limit(dynamic_limits=lambda req, resp, resource, params:
        '999/minute,9999/second' if req.context.user == 'admin'
        else '5 per minute,2/second')
    def on_get(self, req, resp):
        resp.body = 'Hello world!'

# add the limiter middleware to the Falcon app
app = falcon.API(middleware=limiter.middleware)

things = ThingsResource()
special = SpecialResource()
app.add_route('/things', things)
app.add_route('/special', special)

For more details please read the documentation at Read the Docs

Development

For the development environment we use Pipenv and for packaging we use Flit.

Documentation

The documentation is built via Sphinx following the Google docstring style and hosted on Read the Docs.

To review the documentation locally before committing:

$ make docs
$ cd docs
$ python -m http.server 8088

Now you can access the documentation locally under http://127.0.0.1:8088/_build/html/

Development environment

You will need Python 3.6-3.9 and PyPy3 and its source package installed to run tox in all environments.

We do use type hinting and run MyPy on those, but unfortunately MyPy currently breaks the PyPy tests due to the typed-ast package's "bug" (see https://github.com/python/typed_ast/issues/97). Also with Pipenv you can't have a second Pipfile. This is why for now we don't have mypy listed as a dev package in the Pipfile.

Credits

Our library uses the popular Limits library for most of the backend operations.