Question

I’m running a macro that interacts with an API to pull in information about websites and like most APIs it operates a rate limit – 3 requests per second/360 per 120 seconds.

As I have 130,000 records to run I don’t want to be sitting at my PC doing this all day, I know what needs to be done but I don’t know how.

So, with my sheet set to manual calculation I can copy the UDF down for all records, but how would I structure a macro to schedule calculation for 2 per second (I want to be conservative, so it doesn’t ‘fall down’)?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use OnTime to schedule your macro:

Public RunWhen As Double
Public Const cRunIntervalSeconds = 120 ' two minutes
Public Const cRunWhat = "TheSub"  ' the name of the procedure to run

Sub StartTimer()
    RunWhen = Now + TimeSerial(0,0,cRunIntervalSeconds)
    Application.OnTime EarliestTime:=RunWhen, Procedure:=cRunWhat, _
        Schedule:=True
End Sub

Sub TheSub()
    ''''''''''''''''''''''''
    ' Your code here
    ''''''''''''''''''''''''
    StartTimer  ' Reschedule the procedure
End Sub

Sub StopTimer()
    On Error Resume Next
    Application.OnTime EarliestTime:=RunWhen,Procedure:=cRunWhat, _
        Schedule:=False
End Sub