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Data Science
Simon Willison's Blog·May 14·5 min read
datasette-ip-rate-limit 0.1a0
TL;DR
A website was experiencing degraded performance from aggressive web crawlers making excessive requests to specific pages. Simon Willison used Codex (GPT-3.5) to generate a configurable rate-limiting plugin for Datasette that blocks IP addresses exceeding request thresholds.
✦ Why It Matters
Engineers can use AI code generation to quickly build rate-limiting solutions protecting web services from crawler abuse.
Key Takeaways
- Configure rate limiting to protect your site from abusive crawlers.
- Use headers like Fly-Client-IP for tracking requests.
- Set specific paths to exempt from rate limiting as needed.
- Adjust request thresholds based on your site's traffic patterns.
How It Works
The datasette-ip-rate-limit plugin tracks incoming requests using the Fly-Client-IP header, allowing for precise control over request limits. It defines rules for specific paths, enabling site administrators to block IPs that exceed defined thresholds, thus maintaining site performance.