Smartsheet API rate limit exceed - smartsheet-api

Question

Last week encountered for the first time a rate limit exceed error (4003) in our nightly batch-process. This batch proces is synchronising Smartsheet objects with our TimeTracking application 4TT.
Since 2016 this proces works fine, but somehow now this rate limit error occurs and therefore stops synchronising. With the help of the API (and blog about rate limit) I managed to change the code, putting in pauses when this error occurs. This has taken me quite a lot of time, as every time the error occured in a different part of the synchronisation proces.
Is there or will there be a way to let the API automatically pauses, when the rate limit is about to exceed in stead of changing the code every time. And for those who don't want this feature, for example adding an optional boolean argument 'AutomaticallyPauseWhenRateLimitExceeds' (default false) when making the connection to the Smartsheet API?

Answer 1

You'll need to include logic in your code to effectively handle the rate limiting error -- there's no mechanism by which the Smartsheet API can automatically handle this situation for you.
A simple approach would be for you to include logic in your code such that when a rate limiting error is thrown, your code pauses execution for 60 seconds before continuing. Alternatively, a more sophisticated approach would be to implement exponential backoff logic in your code (an error handling strategy whereby you periodically retry a failed request with progressively longer wait times between retries, until either the request succeeds or the certain number of retry attempts is reached).
Implementing this type of error handling logic should not be difficult or tedious, provided that your code is structured in an efficient manner (i.e., error handling logic is encapsulated in a single location).
Additional note: The Smartsheet API Best Practices blog post (specifically the Be practical: Adhere to rate limiting guidelines section) contains info about this topic.

Answer 2

All our SDKs include error retry. So that's the easiest way to handle this situation. http://smartsheet-platform.github.io/api-docs/#sdks-and-sample-code

Answer 3

I found this and other interesting problems (in my lab) while updating the sheet including Poor Internet connection/bandwidth issues.
If unable to accommodate your code to process chunks of data, my suggestion is to use a simple Try/Catch logic to pause the thread/task for 60 secs and then try again.
using System.Threading
...
... //all your code goes here
...
try
{
// your code to Save/update the Sheet goes here
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
Thread.Sleep(60000);
}
The next step is to work notifications when those errors happen