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Simple Rate Limiting for Application Developers

This user guide walks you through an example of how to configure rate limiting for an endpoint of an application using Kuadrant.

Requirements

Overview

In this guide, we will rate limit a sample REST API called Toy Store. In reality, this API is just an echo service that echoes back to the user whatever attributes it gets in the request. The API listens to requests at the hostname api.$KUADRANT_ZONE_ROOT_DOMAIN, where it exposes the endpoints GET /toys* and POST /toys, respectively, to mimic operations of reading and writing toy records.

We will rate limit the POST /toys endpoint to a maximum of 5rp10s ("5 requests every 10 seconds").

① Deploy the Toy Store API

Create the Deployment

Note: You can skip this step and proceed to Create the HTTPRoute if you've already deployed the Toy Store API as part of the AuthPolicy for Application Developers and Platform Engineers guide.

Create the deployments for both clusters we've created previously (kind-mgc-workload-1 & kind-mgc-workload-2).

for context in kind-mgc-workload-1 kind-mgc-workload-2; do kubectl --context $context apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: toystore
  labels:
    app: toystore
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: toystore
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: toystore
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: toystore
          image: quay.io/3scale/authorino:echo-api
          env:
            - name: PORT
              value: "3000"
          ports:
            - containerPort: 3000
              name: http
  replicas: 1
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: toystore
spec:
  selector:
    app: toystore
  ports:
    - name: http
      port: 80
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: 3000
EOF
done

Create the HTTPRoute

Create a HTTPRoute to route traffic to the services via the Gateways:

for context in kind-mgc-workload-1 kind-mgc-workload-2; do kubectl --context $context apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
  name: toystore
spec:
  parentRefs:
    - kind: Gateway
      name: prod-web
      namespace: kuadrant-multi-cluster-gateways
  hostnames:
  - toystore.$KUADRANT_ZONE_ROOT_DOMAIN
  rules:
  - matches:
    - method: GET
      path:
        type: PathPrefix
        value: "/toys"
    backendRefs:
    - name: toystore
      port: 80
  - matches: # it has to be a separate HTTPRouteRule so we do not rate limit other endpoints
    - method: POST
      path:
        type: Exact
        value: "/toys"
    backendRefs:
    - name: toystore
      port: 80
EOF
done

Verify the routes work:

curl -ik https://toystore.$KUADRANT_ZONE_ROOT_DOMAIN/toys
# HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Given the two clusters, and our previously created DNSPolicy, traffic will load balance between these clusters round-robin style. Load balancing here will be determined in part by DNS TTLs, so it can take a minute or two for requests to flow to both services.

② Enforce rate limiting on requests to the Toy Store API

Create a Kuadrant RateLimitPolicy to configure rate limiting:

for context in kind-mgc-workload-1 kind-mgc-workload-2; do kubectl --context $context apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: kuadrant.io/v1beta2
kind: RateLimitPolicy
metadata:
  name: toystore
spec:
  targetRef:
    group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
    kind: HTTPRoute
    name: toystore
  limits:
    "create-toy":
      rates:
      - limit: 5
        duration: 10
        unit: second
      routeSelectors:
      - matches: # selects the 2nd HTTPRouteRule of the targeted route
        - method: POST
          path:
            type: Exact
            value: "/toys"
EOF
done

Note: It may take a couple of minutes for the RateLimitPolicy to be applied depending on your cluster.


Verify the rate limiting works by sending requests in a loop.

Up to 5 successful (200 OK) requests every 10 seconds to POST /toys, then 429 Too Many Requests:

while :; do curl --write-out '%{http_code}' --silent -k --output /dev/null https://toystore.$KUADRANT_ZONE_ROOT_DOMAIN/toys -X POST | egrep --color "\b(429)\b|$"; sleep 1; done

Unlimited successful (200 OK) to GET /toys:

while :; do curl --write-out '%{http_code}' --silent -k  --output /dev/null https://toystore.$KUADRANT_ZONE_ROOT_DOMAIN/toys | egrep --color "\b(429)\b|$"; sleep 1; done

Next Steps

Here are some good, follow-on guides that build on this walkthrough: