Handling API rate limiting gracefully in a shell script for third-party integration
I'm working on a personal project and I'm converting an old project and I'm working through a tutorial and I'm working on a personal project and I'm working on a personal project and Integrating with a third-party API, I've come across a rate limiting challenge that needs to be addressed effectively. Our application makes frequent calls to this API to sync data, but the documentation mentions a strict limit of 100 requests per minute. Initially, I set up a simple shell script to automate the calls, but hitting the rate limit leads to 429 responses, causing interruptions in the data flow. Here’s a snippet of what I currently have: ```bash #!/bin/bash API_URL="https://api.example.com/data" for i in {1..200}; do curl -X GET "$API_URL?id=$i" & done wait ``` While this loop runs quickly, it doesn’t account for the rate limit. I’ve tried implementing a sleep mechanism between requests: ```bash #!/bin/bash API_URL="https://api.example.com/data" for i in {1..200}; do curl -X GET "$API_URL?id=$i" sleep 0.6 # 1 request every 0.6 seconds done ``` This approach seemed to initially work, but it’s still not robust enough. The API might return a 429 response if the limit is exceeded, and I need to handle that more gracefully. I want to build in a retry mechanism, where the script waits and retries a request upon receiving a 429 status. My current implementation for error handling looks like this: ```bash response=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" "$API_URL?id=$i") if [ "$response" -eq 429 ]; then echo "Rate limit exceeded, pausing..." sleep 60 # Sleep for 60 seconds before retrying # Retry logic fi ``` Integrating this retry logic seems cumbersome, as I want to ensure that I don’t lose track of which requests have succeeded or failed. What I need is advice on how best to structure this script to handle rate limiting while maintaining an efficient flow without overwhelming the API. Should I consider using a queuing mechanism or perhaps a more sophisticated tool like `jq` for managing responses? Additionally, are there any best practices for implementing backoff strategies when retries fail consistently? Any insights or examples would be greatly appreciated. My development environment is Linux. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. I'm using Bash LTS in this project. Thanks for any help you can provide! The project is a application built with Bash. I'm open to any suggestions. I'd be grateful for any help.