Throttling with urllib2

Question

is it possible to easily cap the kbps when using urllib2? If it is, any code examples or resources you could direct me to would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

There is the urlretrieve(url, filename=None, reporthook=None, data=None) function in the urllib module. If you implement the reporthook-function/object as either a token bucket, or a leaky bucket, you have your global rate-limit.

EDIT: Upon closer examination I see that it isn't as easy to do global rate-limit with reporthook as I thought. reporthook is only given the downloaded amount and the total size, which on their own isn't enough to information to use with the token-bucket. One way to get around it is by storing the last downloaded amount in each rate-limiter, but use a global token-bucket.

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EDIT 2: Combined both codes into one example.

"""Rate limiters with shared token bucket."""

import os
import sys
import threading
import time
import urllib
import urlparse

class TokenBucket(object):
    """An implementation of the token bucket algorithm.
    source: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/511490/

    >>> bucket = TokenBucket(80, 0.5)
    >>> print bucket.consume(10)
    True
    >>> print bucket.consume(90)
    False
    """
    def __init__(self, tokens, fill_rate):
        """tokens is the total tokens in the bucket. fill_rate is the
        rate in tokens/second that the bucket will be refilled."""
        self.capacity = float(tokens)
        self._tokens = float(tokens)
        self.fill_rate = float(fill_rate)
        self.timestamp = time.time()
        self.lock = threading.RLock()

    def consume(self, tokens):
        """Consume tokens from the bucket. Returns 0 if there were
        sufficient tokens, otherwise the expected time until enough
        tokens become available."""
        self.lock.acquire()
        tokens = max(tokens,self.tokens)
        expected_time = (tokens - self.tokens) / self.fill_rate
        if expected_time <= 0:
            self._tokens -= tokens
        self.lock.release()
        return max(0,expected_time)

    @property
    def tokens(self):
        self.lock.acquire()
        if self._tokens < self.capacity:
            now = time.time()
            delta = self.fill_rate * (now - self.timestamp)
            self._tokens = min(self.capacity, self._tokens + delta)
            self.timestamp = now
        value = self._tokens
        self.lock.release()
        return value

class RateLimit(object):
    """Rate limit a url fetch.
    source: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2008-January/472859.html
    (but mostly rewritten)
    """
    def __init__(self, bucket, filename):
        self.bucket = bucket
        self.last_update = 0
        self.last_downloaded_kb = 0

        self.filename = filename
        self.avg_rate = None

    def __call__(self, block_count, block_size, total_size):
        total_kb = total_size / 1024.

        downloaded_kb = (block_count * block_size) / 1024.
        just_downloaded = downloaded_kb - self.last_downloaded_kb
        self.last_downloaded_kb = downloaded_kb

        predicted_size = block_size/1024.

        wait_time = self.bucket.consume(predicted_size)
        while wait_time > 0:
            time.sleep(wait_time)
            wait_time = self.bucket.consume(predicted_size)

        now = time.time()
        delta = now - self.last_update
        if self.last_update != 0:
            if delta > 0:
                rate = just_downloaded / delta
                if self.avg_rate is not None:
                    rate = 0.9 * self.avg_rate + 0.1 * rate
                self.avg_rate = rate
            else:
                rate = self.avg_rate or 0.
            print "%20s: %4.1f%%, %5.1f KiB/s, %.1f/%.1f KiB" % (
                    self.filename, 100. * downloaded_kb / total_kb,
                    rate, downloaded_kb, total_kb,
                )
        self.last_update = now


def main():
    """Fetch the contents of urls"""
    if len(sys.argv) < 4:
        print 'Syntax: %s rate url1 url2 ...' % sys.argv[0]
        raise SystemExit(1)
    rate_limit  = float(sys.argv[1])
    urls = sys.argv[2:]
    bucket = TokenBucket(10*rate_limit, rate_limit)

    print "rate limit = %.1f" % (rate_limit,)

    threads = []
    for url in urls:
        path = urlparse.urlparse(url,'http')[2]
        filename = os.path.basename(path)
        print 'Downloading "%s" to "%s"...' % (url,filename)
        rate_limiter = RateLimit(bucket, filename)
        t = threading.Thread(
            target=urllib.urlretrieve,
            args=(url, filename, rate_limiter))
        t.start()
        threads.append(t)

    for t in threads:
        t.join()

    print 'All downloads finished'

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()