Rate limiting an application

A common scenario in distributed computing is to only allow for a given number of requests to execute concurrently. Using Dapr, you can control how many requests and events will invoke your application simultaneously.

Note that this rate limiting is guaranteed for every event that’s coming from Dapr, meaning Pub/Sub events, direct invocation from other services, bindings events etc. Dapr can’t enforce the concurrency policy on requests that are coming to your app externally.

Setting max-concurrency

Without using Dapr, a developer would need to create some sort of a semaphore in the application and take care of acquiring and releasing it. Using Dapr, there are no code changes needed to an app.

Setting max-concurrency in Kubernetes

To set max-concurrency in Kubernetes, add the following annotation to your pod:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nodesubscriber
  labels:
    app: nodesubscriber
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nodesubscriber
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nodesubscriber
      annotations:
        dapr.io/enabled: "true"
        dapr.io/id: "nodesubscriber"
        dapr.io/port: "3000"
        dapr.io/max-concurrency: "1"
...

Setting max-concurrency using the Dapr CLI

To set max-concurrency with the Dapr CLI for running on your local dev machine, add the max-concurrency flag:

dapr run --max-concurrency 1 --app-port 5000 python ./app.py.

The above examples will effectively turn your app into a single concurrent service.