Is Facebook Really Rate Limiting Share Count Requests?

3
votes

Facebook's API doc says you can only make 200 share count requests per app-user every hour (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/advanced/rate-limiting) but I just made 200K share count requests in less than 60 minutes and I didn't get any rate limiting header. I want to see the X-App-Usage HTTP header to code something in order to handle it. Do you know if Facebook is really rate limiting share count requests?

In addition, the Application Rate Limiting Chart is always showing nothing:

Application Rate Limiting Chart

Thanks for reading!

1
facebookfacebook-graph-api
It’s a normal API request, so of course the limits apply. Depending on your app’s “size” it might not trigger a block immediately. “I want to see the X-Page-Usage HTTP header to code something in order to handle it” – what it looks like is described in the docs, so you should be able to implement whatever you need without having to actually force your app into the limits. If you need to test your app with different specific values of that header, then replace it with a fixed text literal for testing, or something like that. - CBroe
thanks for your fast reply! It's not totally clear for me how exactly the X-App-Usage header is shown ... Anyway, I cannot understand why I am not seeing the X-App-Usage with the usage percentages and neither the Application Level Rate Limiting making 200K every hour - Daniel García Baena
Breaking the speed limit doesn’t necessarily mean you get caught doing it either … as I said, Facebook does not necessarily block apps immediately for being over the limits. - CBroe
“It's not totally clear for me how exactly the X-App-Usage header is shown” – it’s an HTTP response header, so you have to get that out of the API response with whatever technique you are using for your requests … - CBroe
"If your app is making enough calls to be considered for rate limiting by our system, we return an X-App-Usage HTTP header. This header contains the current percentage of usage for your app." It seems like an automatic warning to prevent faulty apps - Daniel García Baena

1 Answers

0
votes

On Facebook's documentation for Rate Limiting on the Graph API (shortcut to App-Level limits), I found this little note:

Caveats:

  • Not all API calls are subject to rate limits, so the number of calls you make may not match what you see in the rate limit tool.