From cda6260f4ac190c37c966fbbe828edc92a2839a9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Daniel G. Taylor" <danielgtaylor@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:24:16 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] docs: add retries docs

---
 docs/retries.md | 77 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 77 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 docs/retries.md

diff --git a/docs/retries.md b/docs/retries.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c21b35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/retries.md
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+# Retries & Timeouts
+
+Restish has support for automatic retries for some types of requests, and also supports giving up after a certain amount of time. This is useful for APIs that are rate-limited or have intermittent issues.
+
+## Automatic Retries
+
+By default, Restish will retry the following responses two times:
+
+- `408 Request Timeout`
+- `425 Too Early`
+- `429 Too Many Requests`
+- `500 Internal Server Error`
+- `502 Bad Gateway`
+- `503 Service Unavailable`
+- `504 Gateway Timeout`
+
+This is configurable via the `--rsh-retry` parameter or `RSH_RETRY` environment variable, which should be a positive integer. Set to `0` to disable retries.
+
+Here is an example of the default behavior:
+
+```bash
+# Trigger retries by generating a 429 response.
+$ restish api.rest.sh/status/429
+WARN: Got 429 Too Many Requests, retrying in 1s
+WARN: Got 429 Too Many Requests, retrying in 1s
+HTTP/2.0 429 Too Many Requests
+Cache-Control: private
+Cf-Cache-Status: MISS
+Cf-Ray: 80e668787b3ec59c-SEA
+Content-Length: 0
+Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2023 18:49:47 GMT
+Server: cloudflare
+Vary: Accept-Encoding
+X-Do-App-Origin: 18871cde-e6ba-11ec-b1dc-0c42a19a82a7
+X-Do-Orig-Status: 429
+X-Varied-Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, br
+```
+
+By default, Restish will wait 1 second between retries. If the server responds with one of the following headers, it will be parsed and used to determine the retry delay:
+
+- `Retry-After` ([RFC 7231](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-7.1.3))
+- `X-Retry-In` (as set by e.g. [Traefik](https://doc.traefik.io/traefik/middlewares/http/ratelimit/) [rate limiting](https://github.com/traefik/traefik/blob/v2.10/pkg/middlewares/ratelimiter/rate_limiter.go#L176-L177))
+
+For example:
+
+```bash
+# Trigger delayed retries with a 429 and Retry-After header.
+$ restish api.rest.sh/status/429?retry-after=3
+WARN: Got 429 Too Many Requests, retrying in 3s
+WARN: Got 429 Too Many Requests, retrying in 3s
+HTTP/2.0 429 Too Many Requests
+Cache-Control: private
+Cf-Cache-Status: MISS
+Cf-Ray: 80e669fbb95a283d-SEA
+Content-Length: 0
+Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2023 18:50:49 GMT
+Retry-After: 3
+Server: cloudflare
+Vary: Accept-Encoding
+X-Do-App-Origin: 18871cde-e6ba-11ec-b1dc-0c42a19a82a7
+X-Do-Orig-Status: 429
+X-Varied-Accept-Encoding: br, deflate, gzip
+```
+
+## Request Timeouts
+
+Restish has optional timeouts you can set on outgoing requests using the `--rsh-timeout` parameter or `RSH_TIMEOUT` environment variable. This should be a duration with suffix, e.g. `1s` or `500ms`. Set to `0` to disable timeouts (which is the default). Timeouts are retried since they are often due to intermittent network issues and subsequent requests may succeed.
+
+Here is an example of a timeout:
+
+```bash
+# Trigger a timeout with a ridiculously low value.
+$ restish api.rest.sh/ --rsh-timeout=10ms
+WARN: Got request timeout after 10ms, retrying
+WARN: Got request timeout after 10ms, retrying
+ERROR: Caught error: Request timed out after 10ms: Get "https://api.rest.sh/": context deadline exceeded
+```