Async

I was working with a rate-limited API endpoint where I continuously needed to send short-polling GET requests without hitting HTTP 429 error. Perusing the API doc, I found out that the API endpoint only allows a maximum of 100 requests per second. So, my goal was to find out a way to send the maximum amount of requests without encountering the too-many-requests error.

I picked up Python’s asyncio and the amazing HTTPx library by Tom Christie to make the requests. This is the naive version that I wrote in the beginning; it quickly hits the HTTP 429 error:

Whether you like it or not, the split world of sync and async functions in the Python ecosystem is something we’ll have to live with; at least for now. So, having to write things that work with both sync and async code is an inevitable part of the journey. Projects like Starlette, HTTPx can give you some clever pointers on how to craft APIs that are compatible with both sync and async code.