SocialMail rate limiting
by Daniel on Jul.10, 2010, under Uncategorized
Since moving to a single key for new SocialMail users, it’s become fairly clear that unless I put some controls in place the allocation of queries that I have would be used fairly early in the month meaning no “COMMUNITY” key (i.e. users without their own rapleaf key). In fact my first attempt at rate limiting to 500 queires per day, for the community not each user, mean that the daily allocation was used before 5pm.
Somethings have been changed to improve the situation, I’ve added caching to the server so if the same query is received more than once in a 45 day window the same data is returned (smaller windows are used for requests which don’t return data) to save an API call. Additionally I’ve changed the throttling to 25 queries per hour (again for the COMMUNITY key users) so that the spread is more even throughout the day.
I know this limit is low, but at this stage I don’t have any options but am presently investigating a couple of avenues. If you want more queires then the only option for the moment is to get your own RapLeaf API key and put it in the SocialMail config. When using your own key the throttling doesn’t apply.
Update: Thanks to the folks at Rapleaf, who have given us an increased limit. So to spread this out I’ve upped the hourly limit to 50 queries, still not a lot but its better than where we were.
-Daniel
July 25th, 2010 on 4:57 pm
Hello Friend,
Thank you for the community key option. Not having to apply for yet another API key from yet another unknown service provider to use in a newly installed plug-in that I might find unusable or that I dislike is greatly appreciated.
I thought I’d drop you a short note mentioning that I applied for my own Rapleaf API key an hour ago. Although I’m unsure what benefits this plug-in actually provides for me and I experience operational frustrations, I thought I would apply for a Rapleaf API key to lessen my impact on your community key. While reading Rapleaf’s documentation, I started thinking (probably a dumb move)….
Thank you
July 25th, 2010 on 7:34 pm
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July 25th, 2010 on 8:40 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the feedback. That’s precisely the reason that I added the community key, too many people where turning away from SocialMail giving it a real chance, so I’m glad you appreciate it.
Can you let me know what operational issues you’re having so I can look at resolving them?
Thanks,
Daniel
August 13th, 2010 on 2:17 pm
I’ve been happily using rapleaf 4 thunderbird. Should I migrate to SocialMail? Does either work with Tbird 3.1 yet?
September 4th, 2010 on 7:25 pm
Hi Joe,
SocialMail is really the evolution of R4TB and provides a lot more functionality. So I suggest moving to SocialMail, and yes it does work in Tbird 3.1.
As for Rapleaf, If there is enough demand I’ll update it for 3.x, but I don’t really want to maintain two sets of code, I’ve just started studying again and it’s really hard to find any time to do constructive coding.
-Daniel