shadow_aya
shadow_aya•17mo ago

Rate Limit with DB

this is more of a general knowledge question, but is it a good idea to store user rate limiting in my database? I guess it is, cause realistically there ain't other options ig. I also don't know how much faster a KV database is for this (in comparison to a doc with a single indexed row), but I don't wanna use multiple database providers (since Convex doesn't do KV)
4 Replies
shadow_aya
shadow_ayaOP•17mo ago
Also, this is my first time extensively working with a real database, and a document database too, I feel like I'm gonna blow up my usage lol (guess that's normal though, to an extent)
ian
ian•17mo ago
Yes I'd use Convex for any k/v uses as well. Simple k/v schema: 
export default defineSchema({
  cache: defineTable({
    key: v.string(),
    value: v.any(),
  }).index("byKey", ["key"]),
});
export default defineSchema({
  cache: defineTable({
    key: v.string(),
    value: v.any(),
  }).index("byKey", ["key"]),
});
Performance should be similar (order of a few ms)- esp. since you're already colocated with the DB. The only nuance I'd think about is to avoid database contention by only reading & writing the document related to the limit in question, so you don't have conflicts when many things are reading & writing at the same time. e.g. a per-user document rather than a singleton document rate limiting on queries isn't really an option, but the nature of the queries is that if the parameters and underlying data aren't changing, it is just hitting the cache
jamwt
jamwt•17mo ago
@shadow_aya just fyi, @CharstarAdmin is something of an expert on using convex to help with rate limiting and traffic mangaement now, and he's using it for these kinds of use cases with many many many thousands of MUAs
shadow_aya
shadow_ayaOP•17mo ago
oh nice thanks for the tips, sounds like a table will do my plan is to implement an express-rate-limit Store for this (seems pretty straightforward https://github.com/express-rate-limit/express-rate-limit/wiki/Creating-Your-Own-Store)

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