ESI request rate limits and cache timers - how much is too much?

I am just getting my feet wet with using APIs.I am unsure how frequently I can hit the server with requests for different information. I tried to find this information at developers.eveonline.com, but couldnt find anything. If I missed it, or its located somwhere else, a link would be appreciated!

Quick example: Using the Route endpoint I can get the number of jumps between two locations. If I understand correctly, that specific route is cached for 86,4000s. So I should not request that data again for the duration. BUT…how soon can I request information on a seperate location pair? How soon can I get market data or industry/ PI data? Most importantly, since I will be doing all this programatically, how many requests should I be limiting myself to per sec/min?

There are no limits other than the cache times and error throttling. But be reasonable… do you really need every corporation and character up to date within 5 minutes for example?

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Good to know. Thanks!

A majority of stuff you could just use the SDE for static data. Like system routes, item/system data etc. Then you can only use ESI for dynamic stuff like contracts, or industyr/market stuff that isnt static.

Yeah I am already using the SDE stuff for a lot of information. I am not very good at working with the map data in order to create routes though. Its not something I need very often, so I figure calling it from the API is my best (efficient) option.

I have started to consider upping my game with regard to making an efficient path finding widget. In the past I have tried to use python implaenting a BFS algo, but everything became too large and slow. Not sure if its just because I am a terrible programmer or if I need to be using something like NetworkX or Neo4J.

Anybody using graph DB’s to handle map-centric queries?

if you’re curious how we did it in python, ESI-routes is open source

That is actually really useful! Thanks!

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