dataservices-api/docs/internal/quota_management.md

All the services from Dataservices API are subject to quota management: check, limit, etc.

There are three main fields in the quota management:

- **Quota**: Number of requests of this kind the user could make, eg. Number of street geocoding requests
- **Soft limit**: This flag enables the user to surpass their assigned quota. When this flag is activated, there is no quota check so the user could make all the requests that they want. Consequently, the `hard_limit` flag, when enabled, indicates that the user cannot surpass the assigned quota.
- **Block price**: Price for every 1000 requests


All the user/organization quota information is stored in the user metadata in Redis but managed by the CartoDB Rails app through the User/Organization models. Nevertheless you could change/read the Redis information through the following keys:

- `hgetall rails:users:username`
- `hgetall rails:orgs:orgname`

This whole information is managed by the CartoDB Rails App too so we could make a numer of useful operations in order to know how much quota do you have, how much quota have you spent this month and so on.

###How can I know the current quota, number of uses, etc for a user?###

You could use the following endpoint to know it: https://<username>.cartodb.com/api/v1/users/<user_id>?api_key=<api_key>
In the result of this endpoint you can see blocks with all the information. Eg:

```
"geocoding": {
    "quota": 1000,
    "block_price": 1500,
    "monthly_use": 743,
    "hard_limit": true
}
```

### How can I set a new quota for a user###

This operation could be done through the rails console:

- First you have to connect to the rails console: `bundle exec rails c`
- Once in the console you have to get the target user/organization:
  - `u = User.find(username: '<username>')`
  - `o = Organization.find(name: '<orgname>')`
- After we have the user/organization, we could change the quota or the hard limit flag for the desired service. I'm going to use geocoding as an example but it could be done with all the services:

  ```
     u.geocoding_quota = 2000
     [u.soft_geocoding_limit = true|false]
     u.save
     ```
  ```
     o.geocoding_quota = 2000
     o.save
    ```
- This way the user now has 2000 requests as their current quota
- We can only change the hard limit flag for users, not for organizations

### What services we could change?###

  The following list numbers all the current services but this is a living list so it could keep growing in the future:

  - Geocoding (street level): `geocoding_quota`, `soft_geocoding_limit`
  - Isolines: `here_isolines_quota`, `soft_here_isolines_limit`
  - Data observatory snapshot: `obs_snapshot_quota`, `soft_obs_snapshot_limit`
  - Data observatory general: `obs_general_quota`, `soft_obs_general_limit`

### How is the quota spent?###

Almost in all the services: geocoding, data observatory snapshot and general the number of spent credits is calculated per request made (either successful or empty request).

In the case of the isolines service, the number of credits is calculated based on the number of isolines generated by the request. Ie. If your query generates 3 isolines for the request, you've spent 3 isolines credits.