Navigation :

Basic rate limiting

Set up basic rate limiting for your API products before you expose the API products in the developer portal. The rate limits control how many requests within a time period are allowed to your API products, such as 100 requests per minute. The rate limits form a key part of the usage plan for your API products.

Before you begin

Create your APIs, including the Gloo ApiDocs that describe the stitched schema.
Bundle your APIs into API products by using a route table.
Optional: Review the Usage plan overview to understand how the various Gloo custom resources work together to create usage plans for your developer portal.
Get the labels of your routes to use to apply policies to, such as with the example query.
```
kubectl get rt -n gloo-mesh-gateways -o=jsonpath='{range .items[*]}[{.metadata.name}, {.spec.http[*].name}, {.spec.http[*].labels}]{"\n"}{end}'
```
Example output:
- The tracks-rt route table has a usagePlans: dev-portal label on its tracks-api route.
- The other route tables do not have route-level labels. To apply policies, you can add labels to those routes.
```
[api-example-com-rt, , ]
[petstore-rt, pets-api users-api store-api, ]
[tracks-rt, tracks-api, {"usagePlans":"dev-portal"}]
```

Rate limiting policy

Control how many requests within a time period are allowed to your APIs, such as 100 requests per minute.

Review the following example rate limiting resources.

Select the rate limiting server to use. The example uses the default rate limiting server that you created when you installed Gloo Platform. For more information, see Rate limit server settings.

kubectl apply -f - << EOF
apiVersion: admin.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RateLimitServerSettings
metadata:
  name: rl-server
  namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
  labels:
    portal: rate-limit
spec:
  destinationServer:
    port:
      name: grpc
    ref:
      cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
      name: rate-limiter
      namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
EOF

Set up the rate limit client config to define the usagePlan descriptor key and extract details from the x-solo-plan header that is set up in your matching external auth policy. The configuration varies depending on the type of external auth policy that you applied: API key or OAuth. For more information, see Rate limit client config.

API key
OAuth

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: trafficcontrol.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RateLimitClientConfig
metadata:
  name: usage-plans
  namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
  labels:
    portal: rate-limit
spec:
  raw:
    rateLimits:
    - setActions:
      - requestHeaders:
          descriptorKey: usagePlan
          headerName: x-solo-plan
      - metadata:
          descriptorKey: userId
          metadataKey:
            key: envoy.filters.http.ext_authz
            path:
              - key: userId
EOF

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: trafficcontrol.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RateLimitClientConfig
metadata:
  name: usage-plans
  namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
  labels:
    portal: rate-limit
spec:
  raw:
    rateLimits:
    - setActions:
      - metadata:
          descriptorKey: usagePlan
          metadataKey:
            key: envoy.filters.http.ext_authz
            path:
              - key: usagePlan
      - metadata:
          descriptorKey: userId
          metadataKey:
            key: envoy.filters.http.ext_authz
            path:
              - key: userId
EOF

Use the RateLimitServerConfig to define the values of the descriptors that are the usage plan names, that match the usagePlan descriptor key that you configured in the RateLimitClientConfig. The userId and usagePlan details are extracted from the API key details in the request header that is required by the API key external auth policy. The following rate limit server config example creates three usage plans as follows:

Bronze: Requests to your APIs are limited to 1 per minute.
Silver: Requests to your APIs are limited to 3 per minute.
Gold: Requests to your APIs are limited to 5 per minute.

For more information, see Rate limit server config.

kubectl apply -f - << EOF
apiVersion: admin.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RateLimitServerConfig
metadata:
  name: usage-plans
  namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
  labels:
    portal: rate-limit
spec:
  destinationServers:
  - port:
      name: grpc
    ref:
      cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
      name: rate-limiter
      namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
  raw:
    setDescriptors:
      - simpleDescriptors:
          - key: userId
          - key: usagePlan
            value: bronze
        rateLimit:
          requestsPerUnit: 1
          unit: MINUTE
      - simpleDescriptors:
          - key: userId
          - key: usagePlan
            value: silver
        rateLimit:
          requestsPerUnit: 3
          unit: MINUTE
      - simpleDescriptors:
          - key: userId
          - key: usagePlan
            value: gold
        rateLimit:
          requestsPerUnit: 5
          unit: MINUTE
EOF

Apply the rate limit policy to the tracks-api route that you previously created in the API product's route table. You apply policies by labels. The tracks-api route has the usagePlans: dev-portal label.

kubectl apply -f - << EOF
apiVersion: trafficcontrol.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RateLimitPolicy
metadata:
  name: tracks-rate-limit
  namespace: default
  labels:
    portal: rate-limit
spec:
  applyToRoutes:
  - route:
      labels:
        usagePlans: dev-portal
  config:
    ratelimitServerConfig:
      name: usage-plans
      namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
      cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
    ratelimitClientConfig:
      name: usage-plans
      namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
      cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
    serverSettings:
      name: rl-server
      namespace: gloo-mesh-addons
      cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
    phase:
      postAuthz:
        priority: 1
EOF

Verify that your rate limiting is in place by repeating the following request 6 times in a row. Because your user ID is limited to the gold usage plan's limit of 5 requests per minute, the sixth time your request is blocked. Note that this step requires you to have set up API key external auth already.
```
curl -v -H 'api-key: apikey1' --resolve api.example.com:80:${INGRESS_GW_IP} http://api.example.com/trackapi/tracks
```
Example output:
```
< HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
< x-envoy-ratelimited: true
```

Next steps

Set up dynamic rate limiting for more fine-grained rate limit control.
If you haven't already, require API key external auth.
Configure the developer portal.

When you are done with trying out Portal, you can clean up all of the resources that you created.