Question

I’ve added a search function on my website where users will be able to search the content of my page.

Code:

    try
        {
            $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=hostname;dbname=searchdb", "searchuser", "searchpw", 
array(PDO::ATTR_PERSISTENT => true));
        }
        catch (PDOException $ex) {
            echo $ex->getMessage() . "<br>";
            exit('Connection Closed');
        }
        $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false);
        $stmt = $pdo->prepare($query);
        $stmt->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
        $stmt->execute();

Now I wanted to know how to protect it from search overload. I believe anyone can create a simple bot program that can that waste my bandwidth/cpu with too many search queries.

I mean I could track the IP Address and limit it from there but I would like to avoid that route if possible.

Answer 1

There are many ways, maybe try limiting the searches per time interval for specific ip address, create a table and store searches ips and time searched, and allow as many searches as you want.. simple and efficient..