Symfony guide · PHP SDK

Symfony rate limiting,configured in one YAML file.

Add reqkey.yaml. Every request is checked against the caller’s key, charged against their credits, and held to their plan’s rate limit before your controller runs.

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  • Keys issued per customer
  • Credits that refill
  • Limits per plan, not per process

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Check and log, end to end
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The usual Symfony rate limiter counts requests. It doesn’t know your customers.

Symfony’s RateLimiter defines limiters in framework.rate_limiter; you inject the factory, create a limiter per identifier, and consume() in the controller.

With the RateLimiter componenttoday
# rate_limiter.yaml — Symfony’s componentframework:
    rate_limiter:
        anonymous_api:
            policy: 'sliding_window'
            limit: 100
            interval: '60 minutes'
  • You call consume() yourself in each controller or listener
  • The identifier is yours to choose and validate — usually the client IP
  • No API keys: issuing, hashing, scoping, and revoking them is still yours to build
  • No credit balance: a request can’t cost 5 on one route and 1 on another, or refill each month
  • One limit for everyone — no per-plan limits for Free, Pro, and Enterprise customers
  • No per-customer usage log to answer “why was I blocked?” or bill against
With ReqKey in Symfonyone middleware
  • API keys issued per customer, prefixed, hashed, and revocable from the dashboard
  • A credit balance per customer — price each route, refill every hour, day, week, or month
  • Rate limits set per plan, shared by all of a customer’s keys, from 1 second to 24 hours
  • The same count on every worker, instance, and region — no Redis to run
  • Over the limit? A 429 with Retry-After, and no credits charged
  • Every request logged per customer — status, latency, endpoint — in under 5ms
Controllers read the verdict with $request->attributes->get('reqkey'). See the code

Symfony in three steps, one of them code.

ReqKey runs inside your API, not in front of it. Your server asks one question per request and gets an answer in under 5ms.

  1. 1

    Install the SDK

    composer require reqkey/reqkey

  2. 2

    Set your project key

    Copy it from the dashboard into REQKEY_PROJECT_KEY. It stays on your server.

  3. 3

    Add the Symfony middleware

    Every request is checked, charged, and logged before your handler runs.

config/packages/reqkey.yamlcomposer require reqkey/reqkey
# config/packages/reqkey.yaml
reqkey:
  project_key: '%env(REQKEY_PROJECT_KEY)%'
  middleware:
    api_id: '%env(REQKEY_API_ID)%'
    key_name: X-Startup-Key
    exclude_paths: ['/health']
 
# ── src/Controller/PaymentController.php ──────────────────
#[Route('/payments', methods: ['POST'])]
public function create(Request $request): JsonResponse
{
    $decision = $request->attributes->get('reqkey');
 
    return $this->json(['credits_remaining' => $decision->creditsRemaining], 201);
}
Also in PHP: Laravel, SlimFull PHP reference

Every request gets one of these answers

  • 200Valid key, credits charged — your handler runs
  • 402Out of credits
  • 403Key disabled, or not allowed on this API
  • 429Over the rate limit — no credits charged

Where ReqKey sits

Your customer
Your APIReqKey, under 5ms
Your handler

Responses go straight back to your customer. ReqKey sees the key check and the log line, nothing else.

Credits

Charge each route what it costs you.

A lookup can cost 1 credit and a render 5, from the same balance. Excluded paths are never validated, charged, or recorded. In PHP:

Per-route credits · PHP
new MiddlewareConfig(
    apiId: 'api_payments',
    // Exact paths or trailing-* prefixes: never validated, charged, or recorded
    excludePaths: ['/health', '/docs/*'],
    // Or decide per request with a predicate
    shouldProtect: static fn (RequestData $request): bool => str_starts_with($request->path, '/api/'),
    // Charge endpoints differently — a closure instead of an int
    credits: static fn (RequestData $request): int => $request->path === '/images' ? 5 : 1,
);

Rate limits

Set limits on plans, not in code.

Your Symfony code never hard-codes a number. Each plan carries its credits, refill, and rate limit; moving a customer to Pro changes all three with no deploy.

PlanCreditsRate limit
Free1,000 / month5 req / s
Pro50,000 / month50 req / s
Scale1,000,000 / month500 req / s
429Over the limit, a call is answered with Retry-After and costs nothing — no credits and no quota.

Example plans. You name them and pick the numbers.

Notes for Symfony teams hit in production.

No consume() calls

The bundle checks every matching request, so controllers don’t call a limiter at all.

Environment placeholders

%env(REQKEY_PROJECT_KEY)% keeps the project key out of the repository.

Plain attributes

The verdict is a request attribute, available in controllers, listeners, and Twig alike.

Symfony rate limiting: the questions teams ask.

Something else? Ask the team or read the docs.

  • For keyed customer traffic, yes. The component remains useful for login forms and other anonymous flows.

  • Symfony 6.4 and later, on PHP 8.1 or newer.

  • On their plan or on the customer (consumer) in ReqKey — a number of requests per window from 1 second to 24 hours, shared by all of that customer’s keys. Your Symfony code never hard-codes a limit, so upgrading a customer is a dashboard change, not a deploy.

  • A check averages under 5ms. ReqKey runs inside your app as middleware, not as a gateway in front of it, so responses go straight back to your customer.

  • You choose: fail closed and answer 503, or fail open and let requests through. Invalid keys are denied either way, and a validation is never retried, so no one is charged twice.

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