Question

How would you limit the number of operations per second?

Lets say we have to copy files from one location to another and we don’t want more than 5 files to be processed per second.

Please see what I am doing

private static string currentStamp;
private static int processedInCurrentStamp = 0;

private static void Main(string[] args)
{
    currentStamp = DateTime.Now.ToString("{0:d/M/yyyy HH:mm:ss}");
    Run();
}

private static void Run()
{
    for (int i = 0; i < Int32.MaxValue; i++)
    {
        string s = DateTime.Now.ToString("{0:d/M/yyyy HH:mm:ss}");
        if (currentStamp.Equals(s))
        {
            if (processedInCurrentStamp < 5)
            {
                ProcessItem();
                processedInCurrentStamp++;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} ::: {1}", currentStamp, processedInCurrentStamp);
            currentStamp = s;
            processedInCurrentStamp = 0;
        }
    }
}

But I need a more elegant and bullet proof way.

Answer 1

Get the starting time, and then in the loop calculate the maximum number of files that should be processed up to the current time, and sleep if you are ahead:

DateTime start = DateTime.UtcNow;

int i = 1;
while (i <= 100) {

  int limit = (int)((DateTime.UtcNow - start).TotalSeconds * 5.0);

  if (i <= limit) {

    Console.WriteLine(i);
    i++;

  } else {
    Thread.Sleep(100);
  }

}

This way the code will catch up if some operations take longer. If you only get three operations one second, it can do seven the next second.

Note that I am using UtcNow instead of Now to avoid the nasty jump in time that happens twice a year.

Edit:

Another alternative is to measure the time that an operation takes, and sleep the rest of it’s time slot:

for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++ ) {

  DateTime start = DateTime.UtcNow;

  Console.WriteLine(i);

  int left = (int)(start.AddSeconds(1.0 / 5.0) - DateTime.UtcNow).TotalMilliseconds;
  if (left > 0) {
    Thread.Sleep(left);
  }

}