ntex-ratelimiter

A rate limiting middleware for the ntex web framework.

Installation

• tokio (default): Enable Tokio runtime support
• smol: Enable smol runtime support (smol is the maintained successor of async-std)
• json (default): Enable JSON serialization for error responses

[dependencies]
# Default features (tokio + json)
ntex-ratelimiter = "^0.3"

# With smol instead of tokio
ntex-ratelimiter = { version = "^0.3", default-features = false, features = ["smol", "json"] }

# Minimal build without JSON support
ntex-ratelimiter = { version = "^0.3", default-features = false, features = ["tokio"] }

Usage

The primary components are RateLimiter and RateLimit.

• RateLimiter: Manages the rate limiting logic and state. You create an instance of this, often shared across your application.
• RateLimit: The ntex middleware that wraps your services and applies the rate limiting rules defined by a RateLimiter instance.

Quick Start

use ntex::web;
use ntex_ratelimiter::{RateLimit, RateLimiter};

#[ntex::main]
async fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    // Create a rate limiter: 100 requests per 60 seconds
    let limiter = RateLimiter::new(100, 60);
    
    web::HttpServer::new(async move || {
        web::App::new()
            // Apply rate limiting middleware
            .wrap(RateLimit::new(limiter.clone()))
            .service(web::resource("/").to(|| async { "Hello world!" }))
    })
    .bind("127.0.0.1:8080")?
    .run()
    .await
}

Advanced Configuration

For more control over the rate limiter behavior:

use ntex_ratelimiter::{RateLimiter, RateLimiterConfig};
use std::time::Duration;

let config = RateLimiterConfig {
    capacity: 1000,                              // 1000 requests  
    window: 3600,                               // per hour (3600 seconds)
    cleanup_interval: Duration::from_secs(300), // cleanup every 5 minutes
    stale_threshold: Duration::from_secs(7200), // remove entries idle for 2+ hours
    trust_proxy_headers: true,                  // trust XFF/X-Real-IP (only behind a trusted proxy)
    max_entries: 100_000,                       // cap tracked IPs; overflow shares a bucket
};

let limiter = RateLimiter::with_config(config);

// Get statistics
let stats = limiter.stats();
println!("Active rate limit entries: {}", stats.active_entries);

How It Works

This middleware uses the token bucket algorithm for rate limiting:

1. Each client IP gets a token bucket with a configured capacity
2. Tokens are consumed on each request
3. Tokens are refilled at a constant rate based on the time window
4. When the bucket is empty, requests are rate limited

Client IP Detection

By default the middleware uses only the peer socket address — zero-allocation and not spoofable by the client. Set trust_proxy_headers = true in RateLimiterConfig to also honor proxy headers; do this only behind a trusted proxy that overwrites (not appends to) them, since clients can otherwise forge these headers to bypass limiting:

1. X-Forwarded-For header (first IP, only when trust_proxy_headers = true)
2. X-Real-IP header (only when trust_proxy_headers = true)
3. Peer socket address (default and fallback)

⚠️ Behind a reverse proxy / load balancer, leaving trust_proxy_headers = false means the peer address is the proxy's for every request, so all clients share a single bucket and are throttled together. Set trust_proxy_headers = true in that deployment (the proxy must overwrite the headers).

Memory Safety

The number of tracked client buckets is bounded by max_entries (default 100_000). Once the cap is reached, previously-unseen clients share a single overflow bucket (still rate-limited, and itself counted toward the cap), so an attacker rotating source identifiers — whether real IPs or forged proxy headers — cannot exhaust memory. The bound is best-effort: concurrent requests may transiently exceed it by roughly the number in flight, but never unboundedly.

Response Headers

The middleware adds these headers to all responses:

Error Response

When rate limits are exceeded, a 429 Too Many Requests response is returned:

{
    "code": 429,
    "message": "Rate limit exceeded",
    "data": {
        "remaining": 0,
        "reset": 1700000000,
        "limit": 100
    }
}

Module Structure

• limiter: Contains the core RateLimiter logic, TokenBucket implementation, RateLimiterConfig, and the RateLimit ntex middleware.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

MIT All contributor.