Raising Google Drive API per-user limit does not prevent rate limit exceptions

Question

I'm working with a process that uses the Drive API to upload plain text files to Google Drive. The process frequently hits rate limit exceptions even though the actual number of requests is nowhere near the per-user limit for the Drive API set in the APIs console. In fact, setting the per-user limit doesn't seem to affect the rate in which we receive exceptions. Is there some other limit (other than the per-user limit) that is governing how many requests can be made per second? Can it be adjusted?

The process uses exponential back-off on these exceptions, so the actions are eventually successful. We're only making about 5 or so requests per second and the per-user limit is set to 100.

Caused by: com.google.api.client.googleapis.json.GoogleJsonResponseException: 403 Forbidden
{
  "code" : 403,
  "errors" : [ {
    "domain" : "usageLimits",
    "message" : "Rate Limit Exceeded",
    "reason" : "rateLimitExceeded"
  } ],
  "message" : "Rate Limit Exceeded"
}

EDIT: Here is a "simplified" version of the code from the developer. We are using the service account with domain delegation as described at: https://developers.google.com/drive/delegation.

package com.seto.fs.daemon;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;

import com.google.api.client.auth.oauth2.Credential;
import com.google.api.client.googleapis.auth.oauth2.GoogleCredential;
import com.google.api.client.googleapis.javanet.GoogleNetHttpTransport;
import com.google.api.client.googleapis.json.GoogleJsonResponseException;
import com.google.api.client.http.FileContent;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpBackOffIOExceptionHandler;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpBackOffUnsuccessfulResponseHandler;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpBackOffUnsuccessfulResponseHandler.BackOffRequired;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpRequest;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpRequestInitializer;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpResponse;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpTransport;
import com.google.api.client.json.JsonFactory;
import com.google.api.client.json.jackson2.JacksonFactory;
import com.google.api.client.testing.util.MockBackOff;
import com.google.api.client.util.DateTime;
import com.google.api.client.util.ExponentialBackOff;
import com.google.api.services.drive.Drive;
import com.google.api.services.drive.Drive.Files.Insert;
import com.google.api.services.drive.DriveScopes;
import com.google.api.services.drive.model.ChildList;
import com.google.api.services.drive.model.ChildReference;
import com.google.api.services.drive.model.File.Labels;
import com.google.api.services.drive.model.ParentReference;


public class Test {
    private static final int testFilesCount = 100;
    private static final int threadsCount = 3;
    private static final AtomicInteger rateLimitErrorsCount = new AtomicInteger(0);

    private static final String impersonatedUser = "<impersonatedUserEmail>";
    private static final String serviceAccountID = "<some-id>@developer.gserviceaccount.com";
    private static final String serviceAccountPK = "/path/to/<public_key_fingerprint>-privatekey.p12";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // Create HTTP transport
        HttpTransport httpTransport = GoogleNetHttpTransport.newTrustedTransport();
        // Create JsonFactory
        final JsonFactory jsonFactory = new JacksonFactory();

        // Create Google credential for service account
        final Credential credential = new GoogleCredential.Builder()
                .setTransport(httpTransport)
                .setJsonFactory(jsonFactory)
                .setServiceAccountScopes(Arrays.asList(DriveScopes.DRIVE))
                .setServiceAccountUser(impersonatedUser)
                .setServiceAccountId(serviceAccountID)
                .setServiceAccountPrivateKeyFromP12File(new File(serviceAccountPK))
                .build();

        // Create Drive client
        final Drive drive = new Drive.Builder(httpTransport, jsonFactory, new HttpRequestInitializer() {
            public void initialize(HttpRequest request) throws IOException {
                request.setContentLoggingLimit(0);
                request.setCurlLoggingEnabled(false);

                // Authorization initialization
                credential.initialize(request);

                // Exponential Back-off for 5xx response and 403 rate limit exceeded error
                HttpBackOffUnsuccessfulResponseHandler serverErrorHandler
                    = new HttpBackOffUnsuccessfulResponseHandler(new ExponentialBackOff.Builder().build());
                serverErrorHandler.setBackOffRequired(new BackOffRequired() {
                    public boolean isRequired(HttpResponse response) {
                        return response.getStatusCode() / 100 == 5
                            || (response.getStatusCode() == 403 && isRateLimitExceeded(
                                    GoogleJsonResponseException.from(jsonFactory, response)));
                    }
                });
                request.setUnsuccessfulResponseHandler(serverErrorHandler);

                // Back-off for socket connection error
                MockBackOff backOff = new MockBackOff();
                backOff.setBackOffMillis(2000);
                backOff.setMaxTries(5);
                request.setIOExceptionHandler(new HttpBackOffIOExceptionHandler(backOff));
            }
        }).setApplicationName("GoogleDriveUploadFile/1.0").build();

        // Get root folder id
        final String rootFolderId = drive.about().get().execute().getRootFolderId();

        // Query all children under root folder
        ChildList result = drive.children().list(rootFolderId).execute();

        // Delete all children under root folder
        for (ChildReference child : result.getItems()) {
            System.out.println("Delete child: " + child.getId());
            drive.files().delete(child.getId()).execute();
        }

        // Create a drive folder
        com.google.api.services.drive.model.File folderMetadata
            = new com.google.api.services.drive.model.File();
        folderMetadata.setMimeType("application/vnd.google-apps.folder")
            .setParents(Arrays.asList(new ParentReference().setId(rootFolderId)))
            .setTitle("DriveTestFolder");
        final com.google.api.services.drive.model.File driveTestFolder = drive.files().insert(folderMetadata).execute();

        // Create test files
        final List<File> testFiles = Collections.synchronizedList(createTestFiles());

        // Run threads to upload files to drive
        List<Thread> threads = new ArrayList<Thread>();
        for (int i = 0; i < threadsCount; i++) {
            Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    while (testFiles.size() > 0) {
                        try {
                            File testFile = testFiles.remove(0);

                            // The file meta data
                            com.google.api.services.drive.model.File fileMetadata =
                                new com.google.api.services.drive.model.File()
                                .setTitle(testFile.getName()).setParents(Arrays.asList(new ParentReference().setId(driveTestFolder.getId())))
                                .setLabels(new Labels().setRestricted(false)).setMimeType("text/plain")
                                .setModifiedDate(new DateTime(testFile.lastModified()))
                                .setDescription("folder:MyDrive " + testFile.getName());

                            // Insert to drive
                            FileContent fileContent = new FileContent("text/plain", testFile);
                            Insert insertFileCommand = drive.files().insert(fileMetadata, fileContent)
                                    .setUseContentAsIndexableText(true);
                            insertFileCommand.getMediaHttpUploader().setDirectUploadEnabled(true);

                            insertFileCommand.execute();

                            System.out.println(testFile.getName() + " is uploaded");
                        } catch (IOException e) {
                            e.printStackTrace();
                        } catch (IndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
                            // ignore
                        }
                    }
                }
            });
            threads.add(thread);
        }

        long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();

        for (Thread thread : threads) {
            thread.start();
        }

        for (Thread thread : threads) {
            thread.join();
        }

        System.out.println("Total time spent: " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime)
                + "ms for " + testFilesCount + " files with " + threadsCount + " threads");
        System.out.println("Rate limit errors hit: " + rateLimitErrorsCount.intValue());
    }

    private static List<File> createTestFiles() throws Exception {

        // Create test files directory
        File testFolder = new File("TestFiles");
        testFolder.mkdir();

        // Create test files
        List<File> testFiles = new ArrayList<File>();
        for (int i = 0; i < testFilesCount; i++) {
            File testFile = new File("TestFiles/" + i + ".txt");
            FileOutputStream fops = new FileOutputStream(testFile);
            fops.write(testFile.getAbsolutePath().getBytes());
            fops.close();
            testFiles.add(testFile);
        }
        return testFiles;
    }

    private static boolean isRateLimitExceeded(GoogleJsonResponseException ex) {
        boolean result = false;
        if (ex.getDetails() != null && ex.getDetails().getErrors() != null
                && ex.getDetails().getErrors().size() > 0) {
            String reason = ex.getDetails().getErrors().get(0).getReason();
            result = "rateLimitExceeded".equals(reason) || "userRateLimitExceeded".equals(reason);
            if (result) {
                rateLimitErrorsCount.incrementAndGet();
                System.err.println("Rate limit error");
            }
        }

        return result;
    }

}

EDIT: We hit this exception when we use a single thread and put a 500 millisecond delay between each call. It looks like it is impossible to get anywhere near the per-user rate we have configured. Even the default 10 requests per second looks to be impossible. Why?

Answer 1

Following up on Steve Bazyl's answer ...

This Google API exception was generated by a C# ETL program that made individual sheet row requests to load into a SQL database table.

ex = {"Google.Apis.Requests.RequestError\r\nInsufficient tokens for quota 'ReadGroup' and limit 'USER-100s' of service 'sheets.googleapis.com' for consumer ...

The "USER-100s" limit appears to pertain to the following text from the Google API v4 "Usage Limits" page.

This version of the Google Sheets API has a limit of 500 requests per 100 seconds per project, and 100 requests per 100 seconds per user. Limits for reads and writes are tracked separately. There is no daily usage limit.

Basically, either a throttling mechanism is required to avoid these requests per time unit constraints, a reduction in the requests made, or a combination of both.

This Google page also mentions that these quota limits can be increased with a "billing account".

Answer 2

There is a lower limit specifically for uploads, and it's per-user across all apps. Will see if we can post the limit in docs.

Answer 3

It means something is wrong in your configuration. You can use Drive API with low quota like what you are experiencing even when your API configuration is wrong.

1. Please check if you turned on Drive API in APIs Console > Services
2. Please check if you use correct API key or authorization flow.

If you still cannot find what causes you this error, please attach minimum code to reproduce this error.