[#1118] Receiving Heavy Load Errors when connecting to the API

Migrated from Redmine #1118 | Author: Lucy Gormally
Status: New | Priority: Normal | Created: 2023-10-10


When we receive a callback from yourselves for either Merseycare, Liverpool, South Sefton, Southport and Formby or Knowsley we then take that callback and request a refresh token before then requesting booking information. We then take the booking information provided by your API and use it to create, booking confirmation, reminders and cancellation notification SMS messages.
When this was only the merseycare instance we were receiving these heavy load errors on a regular basis which is why we applied a throttle to limit the amount of messages we are processing which did resolve the issue but we are now seeing these errors occur on the Liverpool instance which is the instance that handles the most appointments.
It seems to be the authentication steps where we are seeing the heavy load errors

A post request using the URL “https://user-api-v2.simplybook.cc/admin/auth/refresh-token” and JSON Body
{
“company”: “liverpool”,
“refresh_token”: “6556dacac660dc4391acc4898d216a8214bbf4c0c1e27db4993ff57d2f40aee1”
}

Received the html response

\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n This booking page is under heavy load | SimplyBook.me — Free Online Appointment Scheduling Service\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Heavy load detected!

\r\n

We're sorry, too many people are accessing this booking page at the same time

\r\n

This system has reached maximum load, please try again in 10 minutes

\r\n Back home\r\n
\r\n Heavy Load image\r\n
\r\n
\r\n \r\n

Redmine Admin wrote:

hi, please make sure you don’t have more than 10 API requests per second. Requests of your users to admin interfaces are counted too,