Question thread #48

[pauamma]

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

Comments

[ewx]

http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Bot_Policy asks that clients rate-limit their requests.
Is there a suggested request rate, as a default to build into client software?

Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask; if not, where would be better?

[pauamma]

I was hoping to find the answer to your question in https://www.dreamwidth.org/site/bot but that page doesn't say much more. I'm going to go on a limb and say once per second is OK. Mark or Denise or anyone who knows can contradict me if they disagree.

[mark]

Depends on what you're doing, but 1 QPS is probably pretty reasonable for most purposes.

[ewx]

The initial application is backup. So:
- one bulk download the first time round
- subsequent intermittent, (usually) smaller updates
- not much user expectation of responsiveness

But the API library is separated from the user-facing functionality so may support other functions, in a neutral way, in the future.