Core Concepts¶

Welcome to the heart of Traffik. Rate limiting can sound intimidating, but Traffik is built around four simple, composable ideas. Master these and you master everything.

The Four Building Blocks¶

Rate¶

A Rate is the answer to "how much traffic is too much?" It bundles a request limit together with a time window, "100 requests per minute", "5 per second", "1000 per hour". You can express it as a human-friendly string like "100/min" or construct it as a Rate object when you need a more complex period.

Rates in depth →

Backend¶

A Backend is where Traffik keeps score. Every time a request comes in, the backend increments a counter, checks whether the limit has been crossed, and hands back a verdict. Traffik ships with three backends: an InMemoryBackend for development and single-process apps, a RedisBackend for production and distributed systems, and a MemcachedBackend for when you already have Memcached in your stack.

Backends in depth →

Strategy¶

A Strategy is the algorithm that decides how to count. Should Traffik use a simple fixed window that resets every minute? A sliding window that's immune to boundary bursts? A token bucket that allows occasional burst traffic? There are seven strategies built in, from the dead-simple FixedWindow to the telecom-grade GCRA, plus a whole collection of advanced strategies in traffik.strategies.custom.

Strategies in depth →

Identifier¶

An Identifier is how Traffik knows who is who. By default it reads the client's IP address, but you can swap in anything: a user ID extracted from a JWT, an API key from a header, a tenant slug from the URL. You can even return the special EXEMPTED sentinel to let a specific client sail straight through without touching the backend at all.

Identifiers in depth →

Putting It Together¶

from traffik import HTTPThrottle
from traffik.backends.redis import RedisBackend

backend = RedisBackend("redis://localhost:6379", namespace="myapp")

throttle = HTTPThrottle(
    uid="my-endpoint",
    rate="100/min",       # Rate
    backend=backend,      # Backend
    # strategy defaults to FixedWindow
    # identifier defaults to remote IP
)

Once you understand these four things, Rate, Backend, Strategy, Identifier, you understand Traffik.