go-kata/01-context-cancellation-concurrency/07-rate-limited-fanout

Kata 07: The Rate-Limited Fan-Out Client

Target Idioms: Rate Limiting (x/time/rate), Bounded Concurrency (x/sync/semaphore), HTTP Client Hygiene, Context Cancellation
Difficulty: 🟡 Intermediate

🧠 The "Why"

In many ecosystems, you slap a “rate limit middleware” in front of a thread pool and call it a day. In Go, people often:

• spawn too many goroutines (no backpressure),
• forget per-request cancellation,
• misuse http.DefaultClient (timeouts/transport reuse),
• implement “sleep-based” rate limiting (jittery, wasteful).

This kata forces explicit control over rate, in-flight concurrency, and cancellation.

🎯 The Scenario

You’re building an internal service that needs to fetch user widgets from a downstream API:

• API allows 10 requests/sec with bursts up to 20
• Your service must also cap concurrency at max 8 in-flight requests
• If any request fails, cancel everything immediately (fail-fast), and return the first error.

🛠 The Challenge

Implement FanOutClient with:

• FetchAll(ctx context.Context, userIDs []int) (map[int][]byte, error)

1. Functional Requirements

• Requests must respect a QPS rate limit + burst.
• Requests must run concurrently but never exceed MaxInFlight.
• Results returned as map[userID]payload.
• On first error, cancel remaining work and return immediately.

2. The "Idiomatic" Constraints (Pass/Fail Criteria)

• Must use golang.org/x/time/rate.Limiter.
• Must use golang.org/x/sync/semaphore.Weighted (or equivalent semaphore pattern) for MaxInFlight.
• Must use http.NewRequestWithContext.
• Must NOT use time.Sleep for rate limiting.
• Must reuse a single http.Client (with a configured Transport + Timeout).
• Logging via log/slog (structured fields: userID, attempt, latency).

🧪 Self-Correction (Test Yourself)

• If you spawn len(userIDs) goroutines: you failed backpressure.
• If cancellation doesn’t stop waiting callers: you failed context propagation.
• If QPS is enforced using Sleep: you failed rate limiting.
• If you use http.DefaultClient: you failed HTTP hygiene.

📚 Resources

• https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/time/rate
• https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/sync/semaphore
• https://go.dev/src/net/http/client.go
• https://go.dev/src/net/http/transport.go